119 Quotes by Luis Alberto Urrea

If you were born to be a nail, you had to be hammered.

The world looked to them like a great roll of butcher paper unfurled on a table.

Everybody knew that being dead could put you in a terrible mood.

Who was to say that God did not use the coyote’s teeth to eat His gifts?

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

This ain’t what we are, homes,” Lalo says. “This is not us. This is the story they tell about us, but it’s not true.

Big Angel didn’t speak, just beamed like some small lighthouse.

Big Angel had never noticed his mother’s endowment before. Suddenly, she seemed to be blessed with an expanse of pillowy flesh. And she tucked the parrot into that cleavage, adjusting herself as it sank from view, finishing the operation by using her thumb on its head to get it well positioned in the shadows. She adjusted her bust and said, “Let’s go to San Diego, boys!

Back at the house. How could you end a whole era and bury a century of life and be home before suppertime? 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.