Margarita Engle > Quotes

“If only the peace I feel right now
could be stored up and released later
when cruelty surrounds me
in the dark
during nightmares.”
― Margarita Engle, Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba

“I feel the heaviness of nightmares
even though I am awake.

How weary I am, how sleepless
and hopeless—there is no escape
from the torment
of wishes.”
― Margarita Engle, Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba

“Joy and truth both have a way
of peeking through any dark curtain.”
― Margarita Engle, Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba

“I have spent all my years
accepting sad truths.

—Quebrado”
― Margarita Engle, Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck

“If we knew how to find
the lost, we would know
how to rediscover
the parts of our minds
left behind
in battle.”
― Margarita Engle, The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom

“Like King Midas, I am left with nothing
but this unreasonable hope
that, somehow, my strange life
and my lost family

will return
to normal. ”
― Margarita Engle, Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba

“How can people stay sane in a world that makes no sense?”
― Margarita Engle, Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba

“I will never understand
the whole world

or even
one country.

All I can do
is try to understand
the truth and lies
in the simplest choices
I face
every day.”
― Margarita Engle, Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba

“The old life is gone, my days are new,
but time is still a mystery
of wishes, and this sad, confusing fragrance. "
—Rosa”
― Margarita Engle, The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom

“The Little War?
How can there be
a little war?

Are some deaths
smaller than others,
leaving mothers
who weep
a little less?”
― Margarita Engle

“That is how I think of peace
and peace of mind—as timid birds
that we have to search for,
not bold ones that come
looking for us.”
― Margarita Engle, Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba

“I feel like...
the boy lost somewhere
between the torment of memory
and a few fragile shards
of hope.
”
― Margarita Engle, Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba

“I don't understand the whole thrilling verse, but I love the way poetry turns ordinary words into winged things that rise up and soar!”
― Margarita Engle, The Wild Book

“I still think of myself
as a broken place, a drifting isle
with no home.

—Quebrado”
― Margarita Engle, Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck

“No matter how invisible
I feel, I will always be wrapped
in the memory
of life as a captive.

—Quebrado”
― Margarita Engle, Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck

“Danger is a chain...passed from one wounded child to the next. We must stop the danger by breaking the chain. We must learn how to stay safe and be kind.”
― Margarita Engle, The Wild Book