119 Quotes by Luis Alberto Urrea

Miguel Angel," he said, "It isn't hard to die. Everybody does it. Even flies do it. Everyone here is doing it. We're all terminal." He had a tear in his eye; Big Angel could see it brimming. "Your schedule is just different from mine.

Big Angel could not reconcile himself to this dirty deal they had all been dealt. Death. What a ridiculous practical joke. Every old person gets the punch line that the kids are too blind to see. All the striving, lusting, dreaming, suffering, working, hoping, yearning, mourning, suddenly revealed itself to be an accelerating countdown to nightfall.....This is the prize: to realize, at the end, that every minute was worth fighting for with every ounce of blood and fire.

On the cool October morning when Cayetana Chavez brought her baby to light, it was the start of that season in Sinaloa when the humid torments of summer finally gave way to breezes and falling leaves, and small red birds skittered through the corrals, and the dogs grew new coats.

Big Angel was late to his own mother's funeral.

He believed he was celebrating them when he shared stories of their foibles. He felt the burden of being their living witness. Somehow the silliest details of their days were, to him, sacred. And he believed that if only the dominant culture could see these small moments, they would see their own human lives reflected in the other.

Poverty ennobles no one; it brutalizes common people and makes them hungry and old.

Each of these proud cabrones refusing to apologize for whatever they were mad about. Each one waiting for some sign. And Mama, in the middle, frantic. All she wanted was to see what was left of her family come together, before…Well, before.

Laughter is a virus that infects you with humanity.

The world was more than a place. Life was more than an event. It was all one thing, and that thing was: story.