David

“And so, Olga, you must see yourself and my absence not as one little girl missing her mother, but as a brave young woman who knows that in a world of oppression, achieving liberation will require sacrifice. You can't stay in your room and cry. You can't keep Abuelita up at night with your tears. You have to keep your head held high, you have to be strong. Like the revolutionary we raised you to be.”
― Xóchitl González, Olga Dies Dreaming

“Religion is a carnivorous fish in the abyssal depths. It emits the feeblest of light and needs a vast darkness around it to attract its prey.”
― Hervé Le Tellier, The Anomaly

“Olga had never had many friends, in part because she loved to spend time with Abuelita, their minds so much alike. Her mother was so black-and-white—rigid with her principles. Her father, a dreamer, lost in impossible ideals. But to Olga, her grandmother was a hustler who actually got things done. She understood the dance, which they did together, often. Both literally, as Abuelita, glamorous and towering in her heels, loved to dance with young Olga, and also figuratively. With her parents absent for such critical years of her life, Abuelita was never afraid to bend the truth, make someone dead of another person missing, in order to procure special tutoring, or a scholarship, or whatever her grandchildren needed. The truth, Abuelita would say, is so much harder to believe than our lie, no? And it's not like we have bad intentions, si? Yes! Olga would agree. She loved it all. The high heels, the prayer, the laissez-faire relationship with rules and regulations. Whether born that way or formed into shape from necessity, the two women mirrored each other.”
― Xóchitl González, Olga Dies Dreaming

“It's not like in a story. In stories, the endings are ones we can handle, even if they aren't so happy, because they let you linger, they let you go on, sustaining you with morsels of wonder and hope.”
― Chang-rae Lee, My Year Abroad