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And when anyone builds a wall, behold, they plaster it over with whitewash; so tell those who plaster it over with whitewash, that it will fall. —Ezekiel 13:10
Like Jesus, Elena thinks, resurrection is always possible when there’s no body. And just like Jesus, Adán now has disciples.
“The way I understand it, God and the devil were in a giant battle to rule the world, right?” “I suppose.” “Right,” Adán said. “Look around you—the devil won.”
you pretend to be something long enough, you’re not pretending anymore, you are that thing.
Nico is from El Basurero. He knows the sounds of sex, knows the sounds of men fucking women, the grunts, the moans, the dirty curses, and now he hears all of that and he also hears laughter and shouts and muffled cries and sobs as they take turns on her, use her in all the ways he knows from a childhood spent in a garbage dump. The boy wants to be a hero, wants to help his friend, wants to knock the men off her and kill them and save her, but his legs won’t move. All he can do is crouch and listen. He’s ashamed. And then it’s quiet.
If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. —Friedrich Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil
Have a ten-dollar bill change hands in the projects, you go to jail. Change three hundred million on Wall Street, you go to dinner at the White House.
“The good things in this world aren’t done by saints. They’re done by compromised people doing the best they can.”
“‘We have to laugh,’” Ana quotes. “‘Because laughter, we already know, is the first evidence of freedom.’” “Castellanos,” Marisol says. “‘I am the daughter of myself. My dream was born. My dream sustains me.’” “‘Death will be the proof that we lived.’”
He always thought death would be quiet, but it’s noisier than hell.
“Te amo, Arturo.” “Te amo también, Mari.”
In the drug game there are no innocent bystanders.
It’s been Eddie’s experience that the hottest women are the worst in bed. Maybe, he thinks, because they feel that the bestowal of their beauty is gift enough and they don’t have to put in any effort beyond the makeup and hair. Eva Barrera is no exception. She looks great. A genuine California ten on the looks scale but maybe a three in the skills department. She gives Eddie the obligatory opening blow-job action, but she does it like she’s sucking on a lemon; her face gets this sour look, and her tongue stays on the bench the whole time, just will not get in the game. Eddie finally gets tired
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“Bill Garrity couldn’t find a hooker in a whorehouse,”
Hell is truth seen too late. —Thomas Hobbes Leviathan
Nothing is emptier than an empty house. The vacant kitchen chair, the imprint on a sofa cushion, the pillow unsplayed with hair, absent of scent. An unspoken thought, an unshared laugh, the silence of no footsteps, no sighs, no breaths.
She sits up and sighs. “Problem?” “You’re not doing it right.” Not doing it right? Jacqui thinks. Like it’s what, a cappuccino? It’s a pretty simple equation there, dumbass. It’s suction, basic physics. “What do you want me to do different?” she asks. Like be Fergie, Jennifer Lawrence, a Kardashian? “Use your tongue more.”
“Jason, he raped me.” “Oh.” Oh. That’s it. Oh. What you have to remember about this world, Jacqui knows, is that at the end of the day no one gives a shit. Not at the start of the day, either. At no time during the day does anyone give a shit.
“Hobbes said, ‘Hell is truth seen too late,’” Keller says. “I pray that this truth hasn’t come too late.
A border is something that divides us but also unites us; there can be no real wall, just as there is no wall that divides the human soul between its best impulses and its worst.
