Don't Date Rosa Santos Quotes

“I was a collection of hyphens and bilingual words. Always caught in between. Two schools, two languages, two countries. Never quite right or enough for either. My dreams were funded by a loan made long before me, and I paid it back with in guilt and success. I paid it back by tending a garden whose roots I could not reach”
― Nina Moreno, Don't Date Rosa Santos

“I begged time to slow so I could live in this moment a little longer. Gather all of this up and press these moments between pages like flowers.

Tonight was a homecoming alive with music, life, and joy.”
― Nina Moreno, Don't Date Rosa Santos

“I should have used my pain better. You and your mother deserved that.”
― Nina Moreno, Don't Date Rosa Santos

“My first time in the sea felt like returning to something. I thought of my mother and abuela, the image of them sharp and sudden. I wanted to see what was on the other side. I wanted to find what was lost. I wanted to know how to move forward… My only offering heart, humility, and these coins. My tongue was heavy with the wrong language.”
― Nina Moreno, Don't Date Rosa Santos

“I would have my own stories from the island that, for so long, had been an heirloom I couldn't touch.”
― Nina Moreno, Don't Date Rosa Santos

“Sometimes it felt like the idea of being cursed was all in my head. Like it was a fabled warning to remind me to work hard and focus on my goals. The women before me had lost too much for me to be anything but firmly focused on the future. I was meant to achieve and make all of the loss, heartache, and sacrifices mean something.”
― Nina Moreno, Don't Date Rosa Santos

“Everything I knew about Cuba came from this coastal town, hundreds of miles from the island that was so unknown to me. I met my culture in the food I ate at our table, the songs that played on my abuela’s record player, and the stories that flowed through the bodega and Ana- Maria’s lively home. But I couldn’t find my family in those stories. I couldn’t find me.”
― Nina Moreno, Don't Date Rosa Santos

“I was home, and talking about Cuba had no place here. Mimi was never returning, my mother was always leaving, and I was a flightless bird left at her harbor, searching for answers that were buried at the bottom of a sea I could not know.”
― Nina Moreno, Don't Date Rosa Santos