Ro Menendez > Ro's Quotes

“Secretly, I want the box more than the jewelry. I want it to be all mine and never have to give it back. I could find any old thing—a pebble, a leaf, a pistachio shell—and put it in the box. Like magic, these things would get to be special at least for a day.”
― Veera Hiranandani, The Night Diary

“He said someone needs to make a record of the things that will happen because the grown-ups will be too busy. I’m not sure what he thinks is going to happen, but I’ve decided I’m going to write in it every day if I can. I want to explain things to you as if I’m writing a storybook, like The Jungle Book except without all the animals. I want to make it real so you can imagine it. I want to remember what everyone says and does, and I won’t know the ending until I get there.”
― Veera Hiranandani, The Night Diary

“Amil says he can’t read right because the words jump around and change on him. Papa thinks he’s lying so he doesn’t have to do his schoolwork. But I know he’s not. I see the way he studies the writing, his eyes squinted, his face pinched. I see how hard he tries. He even turns the book upside down sometimes, but he says nothing helps. I think it’s because Amil is a little bit magical. His eyes turn everything into art.”
― Veera Hiranandani, The Night Diary

“It feels scary to talk, because once the words are out, you can’t put them back in. But if you write words and they don’t come out the way you want them to, you can erase them and start over.”
― Veera Hiranandani, The Night Diary

“Kazi tells me stories about you once in a while. I hardly ask him to tell me about you, though, because I’m afraid that the stories might run out. I want to save them, like a treat.”
― Veera Hiranandani, The Night Diary

“I took in Kazi’s words, let them dance and twirl in my head, replayed them over and over like a beautiful piece of music.”
― Veera Hiranandani, The Night Diary

“I used to think of people by their names and what they looked like, or what they did. Sahil sells pakoras on the corner. Now I look at him and think Sikh. My teacher, Sir Habib, is now my Muslim teacher. My friend Sabeen is happy and talks a lot. Now she’s my Muslim friend. Papa’s friend, Dr. Ahmed, is now a Muslim doctor. I think of everyone I know and try to remember if they are Hindu or Muslim or Sikh and who has to go and who can stay.”
― Veera Hiranandani, The Night Diary

“I needed all the feelings to stop boiling like a pot of dal and be cool enough for me to taste them.”
― Veera Hiranandani, The Night Diary

“When you divide people, they take sides.”
― Veera Hiranandani, The Night Diary

“I don’t ask many questions, so it would be fairer if he answered the few I ask. He should be more appreciative. I could be like Amil and ask a question every five seconds, but he doesn’t answer many of those either.”
― Veera Hiranandani, The Night Diary

“I had never wondered about being safe before. I just thought I was.”
― Veera Hiranandani, The Night Diary

“Do we have to take a side?” I asked. “I think it’s safer. That way you know who your enemy is,” Amil said, and crossed his arms tightly over his chest. “But if we don’t take a side, then we don’t have any enemies.” “I don’t think it works that way,” Amil said.”
― Veera Hiranandani, The Night Diary

“He misses the time he had with you. I miss the time I didn’t have.”
― Veera Hiranandani, The Night Diary

“How lovely would it feel to sing like that, to change the air with my voice, to fill people’s ears with such pleasure. The sound cleared its own space and made it seem like everything was okay again.”
― Veera Hiranandani, The Night Diary

“I didn’t feel like talking at all today. Watching the boys made me want to be quiet, so I could think about them. I was afraid each word I might utter would somehow fade the memory.”
― Veera Hiranandani, The Night Diary

“What is going to happen to Kazi, Mama? He’s the only one who looks at me with happy, loving eyes. No one else looks at me that way, not even Papa. When Papa looks at us, his eyes are always looking back inside his head at his own thoughts. He sees and he doesn’t see.”
― Veera Hiranandani, The Night Diary

“After I finish, it’s like the part of me that can’t fall asleep, the part that’s staring at the cracks on the ceiling, wondering and worrying, is emptied in the diary for the night. During the day I fill back up and the pages wait. I like to think you’re holding my thoughts for me until I can tend to them again.”
― Veera Hiranandani, The Night Diary

“...he was one of those people who moved through the world as if he had been around for a long time. An old soul, as they say.”
― Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing

“How do you mourn someone you already let slip away? Are you even allowed to?”
― Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing

“I remind myself that he's dead, that I'll never have the chance to write to him again- but it's difficult to drop an anchor in that reality.”
― Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing

“..., his death tallied as an improvement to society.”
― Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing

“Truth is a hungry thing.”
― Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing

“It was like he used all his compassion on strangers and ran out by the time he came home.”
― Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing

“It's a sad thing when you map the borders of a friendship and find it's a narrower country than expected.”
― Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing

“Sometimes I feel like growing up is slowly peeling back these layers of lies.”
― Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing

“Like a tree in the wind, he will bend before the strength of my conviction.”
― Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing

“I've forgotten what it's like to be around so many people who look like me. I feel like I belong in a way I never do back in the States.”
― Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing

“And even if I had, the answers lived inside me, and when I pulled them out into the light they were pale, weak things.”
― Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing

“Kuya Jun had a way of making people pay attention, of making them realize that others existed outside of themselves and getting them to care.”
― Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing

“That's not how stories work, is it? They are shifting things that re-form with each new telling, transform with each new teller. Less solid, and more liquid taking the shape of its container.”
― Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing