Ask Me No Questions Quotes

“When we came to America, though, we didn't know what the right thing was. Here we lived with no map. We became invisible, the people who swam in between other people's lives, bussing dishes, delivering groceries. What was wrong?

We didn't know. The most important thing, Abba said, was not to stick out. Don't let them see you. But I think it hurt him, to hide so much.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“Because we looked away in the past, does that mean we can look away now?
Page 76”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“Maybe that's what living in America does to you: it spreads you into far distances until you're just little bits rolling apart.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“If I say a word that is angry, he explained, then I should never be surprised by the harm. And if I say something good, then it is like watching my own garden grow, and that is the greatest pleasure ever.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“There are two kinds of people in the world, Nadira,” Auntie tells me. “Those that hear bad news and want to run away and those that dig their feet in and want to fight.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“You gave up because everything stopped being easy. Just because you couldn’t conquer this thing like you always did.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“Maybe if I just stop wanting so much, they can’t hurt me.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“Now I am your valedictorian. I want what you want. I want a future.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“sometimes … sometimes you have to tell them who you are. What you really think. You have to make them see us.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“sometimes there’s someone else, especially when the sky goes dark: the person guiding slowly from behind. That’s who I’ve become in my family.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“for the first time I start to actually imagine me sitting on concrete steps like this, or in a class reading lots of fat books and saying what I think.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“In high school everyone thought I was kind of a freak. ‘Rock Girl,’ they’d call me. But around here people think it’s okay. That’s what’s so cool about college, you know? You have a million kids doing all kinds of weird things here.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“In those days they didn’t enforce the laws. We were the people you don’t always see, flashing our polite smiles, trimming hedges, parking your cars in lots, doing the night shift. You needed us and we needed you.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“One day she’ll exist on paper in this country. She can sit on buses and take classes and get a job and never again feel that churning in her stomach if someone asks for ID.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“How could I get up there in public and act like I’m some representative of the class? I can’t even go to college like the rest of them. I don’t even know where I’m going to live. That’s not right. That’s not who the valedictorian is.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“it’s because the two of them hoped so hard; when things started going wrong for us they broke inside.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“she doesn’t walk behind Abba as in the old days, but gently leads him along while he gets his strength back.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“Better I am poor in a country where I can feel at home. Where I am wanted, than to live like this.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“I hear Mrs. Roble say, “You know, I’ve seen this happen before with the Muslim kids. I push those girls—they’re so bright. Then one day they come in with a head scarf, and they say their marriage has been arranged and they’re not going to college after all.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“Let them peck like old chickens,” Abba laughed. “We know who we are.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“Honey, your uncle don’t even have his papers right. What kind of liberties you think he has?” Aisha”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“That’s what Aisha and I are doing. We’re planting a garden with our words. Our future. Everything careful and chosen well so the shoots come up strong and straight.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions

“When we came to America, though, we didn’t know what the right thing was.”
― Marina Budhos, Ask Me No Questions