Crow Blue Quotes

“I wondered if the space that a person occupies in the world survives the person themself.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue

“I didn’t have any other commitment besides that one, to wait.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“And my life would go on because I was the boss of it, not it of me.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“The city was the same and it wasn’t. The city was different and it wasn’t.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“until they stopped talking, like a noise that disappears into the distance and you don’t know exactly when you stopped hearing it.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“Saying certain things is beautiful. Living them out, not necessarily.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“Like the water that you don’t offer someone because you don’t know they’re thirsty, and the water that the thirsty person doesn’t ask for because they don’t want to impose, full of bourgeois ceremony. (Strange as it may seem, it was my mother who taught me that, adding: only be ashamed of things that are shameful, otherwise you’re wasting your time. Shyness is unnecessary and boring.)”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“things are the wrong answers to the questions we ask, or the right answers to the questions we forget to ask. (There is no wisdom in this. It wasn’t my grandmother who taught me – not least because I never met one of them, and I presented myself to the other one when I was almost fourteen years old and lacked the ears for teachings that she never seemed interested in passing on anyway.)”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“They say that the cells of your body are replaced every seven years, such that you continue to be the same person but, at a cellular level, you have become another, if you compute both extremes. The idea sounds strange, because the cells aren’t all replaced at once, so after seven years you won’t have a fully-recycled body. But at the same time you will.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“So you live here alone? I asked, and if I was indiscreet it was too late, but everyone forgives children for that, and at the age of thirteen I was still in the comfortable position of being able to choose the situations in which I wanted to be considered a child and those in which I didn’t, and to behave accordingly (there has to be some advantage in being thirteen).”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“On Fridays, my mother used to get her nails done and would come home complaining about the smell of the nail polish. On Saturdays, she used to go to the street market and would come home complaining about the smell of the fish. On Tuesdays, she used to go to the supermarket and would come home complaining about the price of things. Sometimes I would go with her to the manicurist and the manicurist would paint my nails pink. I didn’t complain about the smell of the nail polish. After my mother died, I wondered if all these places would save her a space for a while. The space that she would have occupied in the queue at the supermarket. The lettuce or the potatoes that she would have bought at the street market. The potential brushstrokes of nail polish in the bottle. I wondered if the space that a person occupies in the world survives the person themself. If the stage remains set for a while, the props ready, the cue repeated several times, waiting for the person to come on again. And if the connections are only undone slowly, the threads breaking, the lights switching off, the person dying slowly for the world after they have died for themself. If there are two deaths, one intimate and individual, the other public and collective, two deaths that happen at different paces.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“Carlos had gotten up and gone to play with the cat. I asked its name and Florence said Salmon, and Carlos thought it was funny for a cat to have a fish name.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“The wine softened June, made her less anxious and talkative, as if it had reduced her rotation speed on a dial. But none of her three table companions was particularly talkative, so it was good to be able to count on her to prevent any likely silences.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“Then Fernando got into the pool and taught Carlos how to do underwater somersaults, which Carlos ended up mastering after inhaling a decent amount of warm, chlorinated liquid through his nostrils and emerging hurt and confused.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“On the other end of the line, Elisa cried almost every time. That’s why I preferred letters.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“There he was, singing English music in a low voice and off-key because a while ago he had stopped caring if he sang out of tune.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“The family would find happiness there. But eight years earlier no one had any way of knowing it.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“I wondered if that was why the lines in his face were deeper – because it was his birthday. Maybe these things didn’t happen progressively but in waves, in cycles, and when it was your birthday your body realized it had to keep pace with the number indicative of your age, give or take a year.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“Someone replies: Brazil’s always been “the world’s trash can.” Nothing is controlled here and the Bolivians know it. If it were a European country, they’d be afraid to walk down the street and get caught in a “razzia.” Someone replies: There are illegal immigrants all over the world my friend. What about the millions of illegal Brazilians in the US, who even commit petty crimes? He who lives in a glass house shouldn’t throw stones!”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“You shouldn’t get too close to people, Fernando had told me. The Brazilian habit of hugging and kissing everyone. If you want to greet someone, shake their hand. That’s how things work around here.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“Why didn’t you ever ask your mother where your father was? Because I didn’t need to know. Because I don’t think she knew. Because I don’t think she would have wanted to tell me. I don’t know. Why did you and she stop talking? Because we didn’t have any reason to keep talking to each other. Didn’t you have anything to talk about? Didn’t you care about each other anymore? We didn’t have anything to talk about. We didn’t care about each other anymore. That must have been it.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“You’re not going to die, said Comrade Inês. But her body no longer seemed to have the will to live. In her letter to Chico, Manuela wrote, with revolutionary flair: I admire you so much. Your strength, your ability. If I don’t make it, please find a way to notify my parents in Rio de Janeiro. Tell them that I never regretted coming here. Dying sick in a bed isn’t the same as dying in a war against the enemies of the people, it is true, but even so I don’t regret it. I also want to say that I really like you. I wish life were different. You know. Really different. Completely different.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“One day I came across a line at the end of a poem that said thousands have lived without love, not one without water. And I thought it made sense. I thought the poem made sense, even when it didn’t, even when it was a tangle of words.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“I wanted to know why people chopped and changed between lives like that, and changed cities, and changed countries, and took out new citizenships or didn’t take out new citizenships. Why, in this chopping and changing, old loves dropped off the face of the earth, and old loves transubstantiated into friendships dropped off the face of the earth. And why fathers dropped off the face of the earth.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“A week later I joined the ultimate frisbee team. I had never imagined such a sport even existed, but I discovered I had a surprising talent for it. It was played with one of those discs they used to call frisbees that we can’t call frisbees anymore because some manufacturer registered the name.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“We don’t necessarily believe in hell. Look at our necklaces! I’ve got a cross. I’ve got the Holy Ghost. I never did get what the Holy Ghost is, said Aditi. Well, said the white girl. It’s pretty complicated. It’s like this: Jesus, God and the Holy Ghost are the same thing. That is, not even our most knowledgeable thinkers and philosophers can understand it properly.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“Fernando had been so many places after leaving home that he could no longer remember the way back. Of course: home wasn’t there anymore, therefore the way back couldn’t be either. And it wasn’t that home was everywhere now – no, that’s for citizens of the world, those who travel for sport. For those who have never commando-crawled through the frozen mud in China and never run the risk of being devoured by bears in Alaska. It wasn’t that home was everywhere: home wasn’t anywhere.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“Later I realized that life away from home is a possible life. One of many possible lives.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“Cordiality. Necessity. Shame. Curiosity. Ambition. Admiration. The desire to be equal. To belong. Whatever. After you have been away from home for too long, you become an intersection between two groups, like in those drawings we do at school. You belong to both, but you don’t exactly belong to either.”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel

“Perhaps (another hypothesis) it was the disease of Latin American immigrants in the first world: the desperate need to embrace the rich country with all their might and say I want a piece. My story isn’t just mine. It’s yours too. For example: where does your cocaine come from? The meat on your barbecue? The illegal wood in your shelves? Your story isn’t just yours. It’s mine too. Our American dream. After all, America is a chunk of land that stretches from the Arctic Ocean down to Cape Horn, isn’t it?”
― Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue: A Novel