America for Beginners Quotes

“My mother is the reason that I love you,' Bhim said simply. 'She is the reason I know what love is.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“He knew what it was to wish you were something different even when it was the thing that made you yourself.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“In the months after her death he had heard her every day, yelling at him for not brushing his teeth for long enough or wearing a dirty shirt or not offering to help an older woman if he saw one, not that she would have ever accepted help herself. But with time her voice had grown softer and less precise, and he hated it. It was like losing her all over again. No one cared about him enough to yell at him now. No one existed who would bother.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“Rebecca decided to call her mother, who she knew might give her good advice by virtue of recommending the thing Rebecca least wanted to do. Arguments with her mother solidified Rebecca’s resolve on a number of issues and she looked forward to them as a kind of reinforcement against her own fears.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“Of course. It’s exhausting, all that healthy living.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“in New York actors were high-strung and cutting, in Los Angeles they all showed a little wear and tear under the pressure of being so visibly relaxed all the time. It was as if they were boiling under the strain of being so chill.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“how easy it could be to be a person without the rigid structures of duty and the crushing weight of other people’s opinions.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“Ram had been in charge and she had accepted it. She had never realized that had she not accepted, he could not have remained in charge.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“It’s a nice city, right? New Orleans. I’ve only been here once before, I don’t remember liking it so much. New York is great and I love it more than anything, but it’s nice to be somewhere that feels like it’s the product of people, not companies. You know what I mean?”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“For all their claims to modesty and simplicity, he found these Indian aunties by and large to be a vain lot, always conscious of their need to make an entrance, of their gold jewelry and their fine purses, and he felt it part of his job to accommodate them, exclaiming over their smooth skin and dark hair, which he knew owed more to dye than to youth.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“Pival nodded weakly and let every word play over and over in her head until they formed a barrier around her heart. And in her mind she thanked him, for teaching her to be strong.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“She didn’t know much about India beyond what she ordered at restaurants and what she’d read in a few Salman Rushdie novels. The description”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“She hadn’t really known what Bengali was, to be honest, or that it applied to anything other than tigers.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“Besides, the girl, Rebecca, was white, so he probably shouldn’t be thanking Hindu gods for her anyway.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners

“We do not know how to treat our own history. And then we become angry when others take it away from us. Sometimes I wonder if we deserve anything at all.”
― Leah Franqui, America for Beginners