Everything We Never Had Quotes

“We shall never achieve harmony with the land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations, the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.”
― Randy Ribay, Everything We Never Had

“Utang na loob: a debt from within. From the heart. It is a debt you did not ask for and will never pay off but must always try to. It is gratitude for the ancestors who brought you into existence, for the family who raised you, for the community who helped you in ways direct and indirect, visible and invisible. It is acknowledgment that none of us are alone.”
― Randy Ribay, Everything We Never Had

“Julia gestures at Enzo to go ahead, and Enzo takes the leash. “Thank you.” Lolo Emil kisses Thor on the top of the nose one more time and whispers, “Ingat.” Then he climbs into the car. “But make sure to bring him by to visit me,” he tells Enzo before turning away. “For sure,” Enzo says. And then they’re gone. No more pill bottles. No more slippers shuffling across the floor. No more hacking cough or reality shows about hoarders blaring too loudly. No more walks with the old man. Enzo’s room is entirely his own again. He moves everything back into its place. The chair by the window. The bookshelf. The bamboo palm. His journal. Next to the chair, he sets up a dog bed for Thor using an old comforter. Then he sits down and googles how to downgrade to an old-school flip phone. A collective sadness settles over the household. Enzo and his parents eat dinner quietly. They clear the table slowly. They wash the dishes mournfully. Then Enzo takes Thor for his evening walk alone. As frustrating as the old man’s presence was, nobody wanted him gone—they wanted him whole.”
― Randy Ribay, Everything We Never Had

“Chris hugs Enzo closer. “I really do think it’s beautiful that you’re so sensitive, that you can feel things so deeply. I admire it. Never let anyone make you think it’s a weakness. If anything, it’s a superpower. The world would be a much better place if there were more men like you than like me or your lolo.” The moon shifts. The smoke clears. They stay on the porch for some time, Chris’s arm staying around Enzo, Enzo’s head staying on Chris’s shoulder. Silence returns, but this time it’s a silence with a shore on the other side.”
― Randy Ribay, Everything We Never Had

“Chris takes a long drag. “I don’t even know Leon’s story, Dad, so I’m not about to judge him. But I don’t disagree with you about trying to give my child everything I never had. I do think that’s our job as parents, from one generation to the next. But to me, it’s not only about the material.” “Oh? Then what’s it about?” “Love.” Lolo Emil lets out a sarcastic laugh. “I made sure you grew up in a safe neighborhood with good schools. That you could focus on your studies instead of needing a job. That you always had a fridge full of food. That you could go to the doctor when you were sick. That you didn’t have to worry about paying for college—even if I thought your major was useless.” “And I appreciate all that, Dad.” “But that wasn’t enough for you? That wasn’t…‘love’?” Enzo imagines Lolo Emil wincing as he says the last word. In his entire life, had he ever said it to anyone besides Grandma Linda and maybe his own mom? If not, how sad. “In some ways, sure,” Chris says. “But there’s more to it.” “Enlighten me.” “So, yeah, it’s doing all that stuff you did to take care of someone. But it’s also knowing them. Like, really, truly understanding them as a person as much as possible. It’s getting out of the way and allowing them the freedom to be that person. It’s being proud, not when they fulfill your own expectations or conditions but when they live in a way that aligns with who they are. It’s a whole lot of other stuff, too, that I can’t put into words. That’s the love I’m trying to give to Enzo, at least.” Lolo Emil speaks again, this time with uncharacteristic concern. “I never gave you any of that, Christopher?”
― Randy Ribay, Everything We Never Had

“This is not how it was supposed to be. This is not the America he imagined, the America he was sold. He came here to gain; instead, he’s lost so much: land, family, home, earnings, jobs, Milly, Bea, Lorenzo, dignity, hope. All in one year. How many other losses loom on the horizon the longer he stays? After ten or twenty more years in this country, would anything of his—of him—remain? He should never have left. He was a stupid boy who believed flimsy lies. This country is not an opportunity. It is a trap. A poisoned promise laced with lies. He wants to hurt, to kill, or—even worse—to force them to feel his pain. And not only those who murdered Lorenzo but all those who lure and prey and exploit and hoard and destroy. Even all those who shrug and do nothing. Even their children. No matter their nationality or race. The colonizers and the contractors, the recruiters and the thieves, the growers and the gangsters, the bankers and the bootleggers, the pimps and the police and the politicians. Like a seed buried in his heart, his anger grows, takes root, blossoms barbed with thorns.”
― Randy Ribay, Everything We Never Had

“This is a country of broken promises,” she says. “They would have us believe that we were the ones to fail, that it is our fault alone if we do not have the lives we want. That it is our fault we are still toiling in the fields after all these years.” She pauses. Rests her hand on his. “So I am thankful for angels like your father who continue to fight for our dignity, our lives, when everyone else would sooner forget we still exist.” Emil leans back, pulling his hand away in shame at how often he’s mentally disparaged his father’s efforts.”
― Randy Ribay, Everything We Never Had

“You too,” she says. “But once you dig into the history of this holiday, you may find that’s not such an easy thing to do anymore.” Chris considers this. “So sometimes it’s better not to know?” “Never,” Ms. Pérez says, shaking her head. “It’s facing the truth—even when it’s difficult—that allows us to change for the better.”
― Randy Ribay, Everything We Never Had

“He has come to appreciate the way history is not the memorization of facts, but rather a way of seeing. A way of looking at the world and understanding how the past acts as an invisible force perpetually shaping the present.”
― Randy Ribay, Everything We Never Had

“Every day after school and most of the weekends, he chops vegetables, brews coffee, buses tables, empties ashtrays, refills condiment and napkin holders, takes out garbage bag after garbage bag, mops floors, washes windows and dishes, scrubs pots and pans, scrapes the grill, cleans the bathroom, makes soap from excess fat, and does whatever else needs to be done that his auntie or cousins prefer not to do.”
― Randy Ribay, Everything We Never Had

“They’ve never named what they’ve most deeply felt because naming a thing means you must confront it. It means lighting a candle to illuminate what’s lurking in the shadows. Sometimes the only way to survive is to not know.”
― Randy Ribay, Everything We Never Had

“With the arrival of every boatload of Filipinos, a boatload of American men and women are thrown out of the labor market to lives of crime, indolence, and poverty because, for a wage that a white man cannot exist on, the Filipinos will take the job and, through the clannish, low-standard mode of housing and feeding, practiced among them, will soon be clothed, and strutting about like a peacock and endeavoring to attract the eyes of the young American and Mexican girls…. We do not advocate violence, but we do feel that the United States should give the Filipinos their liberty and then send those unwelcome inhabitants from our shores that the white people who have inherited this country for themselves and their offspring might live. —Judge D. W. Rohrbach, Justice of the Peace, 1930 We are the living dream of the dead. We are the living spirit of the free. —Carlos Bulosan, from America Is in the Heart, 1943”
― Randy Ribay, Everything We Never Had

“At the end of the article is another standalone quote from Aldo Leopold: “We shall never achieve harmony with the land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations, the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.”
― Randy Ribay, Everything We Never Had

“Francisco listens as they tell of hunting parties patrolling the town with festive glee, having a grand old time enacting this obvious solution to the Filipino question. Of those who were caught and beaten bloody or stripped naked and taunted with monkey calls or thrown over the bridge or all of the above. Of the Chinese grocer and a few other store owners who ushered fleeing Filipinos in from the street so they could hide in their rafters or back rooms while most of the town drew curtains closed and locked doors until the early morning, when the police gently dispersed the remaining “vigilantes” as if they were rambunctious children who’d gotten a bit out of hand.”
― Randy Ribay, Everything We Never Had

“It is beautiful. It is burdensome.
It is the glue of the community, the weight of obligation.”
― Randy Ribay, Everything We Never Had