House of Bone and Rain

by Gabino Iglesias

Murder is a monster that chews up whatever expectations you had regarding death and spits them in your face. Murder is an attack on someone’s life, yes, but also an attack on those left behind.

Death swallows words, or at least shows you how fucking useless they are.

Perhaps one of the most painful things about growing up is realizing that rather than go away, the things you don’t talk about lurk in dark corners and grow.

Hablar del diablo lo hace venir porque decir las cosas las hace nacer. Talking about the Devil makes him come because saying things brings them to life.

Todas las historias son historias de fantasmas. All stories are ghost stories.

Clubs always remind me that we’re all sad animals looking for something to lift us out of the mud we lived in and make us think being alive was worth it.

Strange how ruined lives can sometimes effortlessly dish out salvation.

The worst thing about smart women is that they smell the stupidity on everyone else.

Sometimes the only thing holding a friendship together is the stuff you don’t say.

In the United States, every time a kid walks into a school with a rifle and kills a bunch of other kids, the government talks about gun reform and then nothing happens.

In Puerto Rico, something similar happens every time a hurricane destroys our shitty electric grid: The government talks about the need to fix it while putting patches on it to get it back up and running, and then they forget about the whole thing until the next hurricane leaves us in the dark for a few months.