Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa > Dahlma's Quotes

“It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connect me with all the people that were alive, or who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin

“Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.”
― Barbara Kingsolver

“The pure and simple truth is seldom pure and never simple.”
― Oscar Wilde

“A writer is a world trapped in a person.”
― Victor Hugo

“Let our voices be heard in all of our languages. Not just English. I am an American and I speak Spanish and English.”
― Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa

“for her
the ocean
was more
than a dream,
it was a place
she needed to visit
to find herself.

and when she returned
to the city,
you could see the sun
in her eyes, the wind
in hair, and taste
the infinite sat
on her lips.”
― José Chaves

“Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“These are the stories. My stories, their stories—just as they were told to my mother and her mother and hers. They were given to me for safekeeping, and now I give them to you.”
― Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, Daughters of the Stone

“Like a primeval wave, these stories have carried me, and deposited me on the morning of today. They are the stories of how I came to be who I am, where I am.”
― Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, Daughters of the Stone

“They brought me the pieces of their lives and bade me make them a quilt of words. When the world was moving too fast for them, they bade me stop time.”
― Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, Daughters of the Stone

“I took their stories and nurtured them, blended them with my own, and let them simmer.”
― Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, Daughters of the Stone

“Don’t forget that the artist still has to be a woman. Nourish them both.”
― Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, Daughters of the Stone

“I would go back there and look for the river and walk through old villages and stand under the moon. I would look into the faces of the people and see the lines of my own face in theirs…. I would listen to the drumming and let the music pull my body. I would dance to the sun at sunset and the moon at midnight and I would soar in my imagination.”
― Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, Daughters of the Stone

“I want you to soar. I want you to go out and find your path and create your own story.”
― Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, Daughters of the Stone

“What you’ll be left with in the end will sustain you much more than any illusion you may have brought with you. Because here in addition to all the problems of poverty, political intrigue, corruption, jealousy, and sociological and historical denial, you’ll also find familia, respeto, dignidad, amor, trabajo, cariño. And yes, you will find racism, alive and well, just like you left it up north.”
― Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, Daughters of the Stone

“I am a teller of stories. It is what I do. It is who I am. I have collected many stories. They have been given to me freely. And now, I give them to you. All I ask is that you listen with your heart and, if you have a mind to, that you pass them on.”
― Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, Daughters of the Stone

“Nightmares are for people who refuse to listen to their hearts. People who have lost their way, who are hollow. Fear slips into those hollow places. It is the very emptiness that draws the fear.”
― Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, Daughters of the Stone

“Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time: Mcdougal Littell Literature Connections