In the Country Quotes

“That must be something, no? To be so rich you think you can buy reality?”
― Mia Alvar, In the Country: Stories

“Again my eyes hurt as if they’d been blinded and gained total clarity all at once.”
― Mia Alvar, In the Country: Stories

“In my earliest days of teaching I would sometimes hide behind jargon this way, learning quickly that a crowd of syllables could soothe the most anxious parent.”
― Mia Alvar, In the Country: Stories

“Servitude had become a habit and posture of her body, in a way that felt painfully familiar:”
― Mia Alvar, In the Country: Stories

“Relax! Love's a miracle, not a disaster. Who said it would be easy, or convenient? But if you can't sacrifice everything for love, what else is there?”
― Mia Alvar, In the Country

“At times I thought so long and deeply about other ways it might have gone for my brother that I almost sensed him, present in the room, with me. I never could get used to the “withdrawal,” as some Katipunero staffers called it: the rude comedown from having lived so thoroughly inside a story it felt real.”
― Mia Alvar, In the Country

“I felt I would do a very fine job of being a vapor, for example, or a silk scarf. I would make a very good wall. For”
― Mia Alvar, In the Country: Stories

“I saw more clearly how much power she had given me, the damage I could do, her dependence on what I chose to say.”
― Mia Alvar, In the Country: Stories

“I was mesmerized by Minnie’s story of the Italian cashiers, their intimate but fierce rebellion. The quietest, most docile worker could, behind her apron or her uniform, be sharpening a blade. I began to imagine all the soft, subtle weapons a worker might employ. Avoiding all eye contact, perhaps, even while saying yes to an order; completing one’s duties very slowly, as if moving underwater.”
― Mia Alvar, In the Country: Stories

“Congratulations!" he said.
"Congratulations?"
"Now you know what it's like."
"To change my major?"
"To fall in love." Andoy laughed. "I always wondered who it would be. What boy could keep up with the toughest girl I know? I should have guessed: it wouldn't be someone for you. At least not a living someone. It would be Shakespeare, and José Rizal, and the Katipunero outside the student union."
I cringed. "It sounds ridiculous," I said. "Forget it."
"No!" said Andoy. "Listen. I'm no scholar, but love I know about. That's my major.”
― Mia Alvar, In the Country

“The God you imagine looks like Father Brennan, the man who baptized you: tall and Irish, with white hair and kind blue eyes, shooting a basketball in black vestments on the parish playground. The Virgin is one of the nuns who ran the adjoining schoolhouse: a spinster with a downy chin, her veil a habit. Old and sacred words, they taught you. You would not invent your own any more than you would try to build your own cathedral. Bead by bead, you whisper the same words Saint Peter spoke in Rome, the same words spoken today by all believers in São Paulo and Boston and Limerick and Cebu.”
― Mia Alvar, In the Country

“Thank you to the friends I laughed with and leaned on at various times while writing this book, and whose domain expertise I occasionally abused for story “research,” including Joy Somberg, Misha Wright, Ammie Hwang, Maya Rock, Jonathan Tze, Nina Hein, Ana Martínez, David Petersen, and Pia Wilson.”
― Mia Alvar, In the Country: Stories

“On paper it seemed possible.
But no.
This house would still be this house, Manila still the city where she had her son, this country still the country that took everything away. You couldn't erase history, but you could close up chapters of it, just as in a textbook.”
― Mia Alvar, In the Country

“I had been taught that senses were the doorway to skills.”
― Mia Alvar, In the Country: Stories

“Her face seemed familiar yet unreal, as if I had seen her before, but in a dream.”
― Mia Alvar, In the Country: Stories

“Education,” I said, “comes from the Latin ducere, ‘to lead’; and e-, ‘out of.’ ‘To lead out of,’ ” I said. With my hands I made an ushering gesture. Mrs.”
― Mia Alvar, In the Country: Stories

“Like Milagros, they’d all gotten where they were by worshiping the god of Education.”
― Mia Alvar, In the Country: Stories