Infinite Country Quotes

“And maybe there is no nation or citizenry; they’re just territories mapped in place of family, in place of love, the infinite country.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“What was it about the country that kept everyone hostage to its fantasy? The previous month, on its own soil, an American man went to his job at a plant and gunned down fourteen coworkers, and last spring alone there were four different school shootings. A nation at war with itself, yet people still spoke of it as some kind of paradise.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“Emigration was a peeling away of the skin. An undoing. You wake each morning and forget where you are, who you are, and when the world outside shows you your reflection, it's ugly and distorted; you've become a scorned, unwanted creature.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“Her father said the death of a loved one was like a house on fire. Even with everything intact, it still felt like mere ashes.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“I hate the term undocumented. It implies people like my mother and me don't exist without a paper trail. I have a drawer full of diaries and letters I never sent to my grandmother, my father, even to my younger sister that will prove to anyone I am very real, most definitely documented; photos taped to our refrigerator, snapshots taken at the Sandy Hill house or other friends' fiestas, the Sears portraits our mother used to dress up for every year, making us seat on bus seats still as statues so we wouldn't wrinkle to have a perfect picture to send back to her mother. Don't tell me I'm undocumented when my name is tattooed on my father's arms.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“Don’t tell me I’m undocumented when my name is tattooed on my father’s arm”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“Another word I hate: minority. A way to imply we’re outnumbered (we’re not), and suggest we are less than.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“You'll be okay, niña. It's like driving these mountain roads. You can't see what's ahead if you keep looking in the rearview mirror.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“People say drugs and alcohol are the greatest and most persuasive narcotics—the elements most likely to ruin a life. They're wrong. It's love.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“Soon after our father arrived we went to a party in our old neighborhood and introduced him to our friends from the basement days. When a cumbia came on, he asked our mother to dance, and we watched our parents sway, finding each other’s rhythm as if they’d never fallen out of step, as if the past fifteen years were only a dance interrupted waiting for the next song to play. I wondered about the matrix of separation and dislocation, our years bound to the phantom pain of a lost homeland, because now that we are together again that particular hurt and sensation that something is missing has faded. And maybe there is no nation or citizenry; they’re just territories mapped in place of family, in place of love, the infinite country.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“That night I thought about how love comes paired with failures, apologies for deficiencies. The only remedy is compassion.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“When you leave one country for another, nobody tells you years will bleed together like rain on newsprint. One year becomes five. Five years become ten. Ten years become fifteen. She never thought that when she left on the plane with Maulo, it would be the last time to see her mother in the flesh.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“She wondered about that, if by birth one could already be out of step with destiny, but only replied that she was very tired and ready to sleep.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“I often wonder if we are living the wrong life in the wrong country.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“When you get to the United States, nobody will understand you. I don't mean just the language. It's a country of strangers. It will be another kind of sentence. But one that as an immigrant you won't be able to escape.

You think this country is so much better?

No, but it's a land of brothers and sisters. You want to go to a place where you'll be invisible.

I want to be with my mother.

Colombia is your mother too.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“He wanted to convey to his daughter the price of leaving, though he had difficulty finding the words. What he wanted to say was that something is always lost; even when we are the ones migrating, we end up being occupied.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“The more he stared at those borders on maps, the more absurd it seemed that outsiders succeeded in declaring possession of these lands with national lines, as if Creation could ever be divided and owned.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“And maybe there is no nation or citizenry; they're just territories mapped in place of family, in place of love, the infinite country.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“There are things I wanted to tell my sister before her arrival. Like that you can love the United States of Diasporica and still be afraid of it. The day after the last election, some kids came skipping into home room like a war was won. Hearing cocaine jokes and mechanical hallway insults of “go back to your country” was nothing new for me and Nando, but there was new brazenness, like a gloved hand reaching for our throats, reminding us we were not welcome.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“And was it true, he asked, the stories of cities contaminated by the water supply, children killed by police with impunity, communities left to fend for themselves against natural disasters as bad as the earthquakes and mudslides this land endured? How could people still think of bring-land as some promised land knowing those things happened there?”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“Police are not your friend. Even the cordial ones. Yes, they are there to help people in danger just like you're taught in school, but in this country some people think the ones they protection from are us.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“It happened far away from the capital, all the way on the Pacific coast, but it was still our country, our dead, Elena thought. Tragic, almost, that she never felt more patriotic than when grieving her country's victims.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“I don’t know why you want to leave the country. You’re obviously a guerrillera by nature.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“We all have breaking points, we all have regrets and maybe more instances we don't regret that society says we should.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“Leaving is a kind of death. You may find yourself with much less than you had before. It seemed to Mauro that in choosing to emigrate, we are the ones trafficking ourselves.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“What was it about this country that kept everyone hostage to its fantasy? The previous month, on its own soil, an American man went to his job at a plant and gunned down fourteen coworkers, and last spring alone there were four different school shootings. A nation at war with itself, yet people still spoke of it as some kind of paradise.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“That night I thought about how love comes paired with failures, apologies for deficiencies. The only remedy is compassion.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“Only women knew the strength it took to love men through their evolution to who they thought they were supposed to be.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“People say drugs and alcohol are the greatest and most persuasive narcotics - the elements most likely to ruin a life. They’re wrong. It’s love.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“I wondered about the matrix of separation and dislocation, our years bound to the phantom pain of a lost homeland, because now that we are together again that particular hurt and sensation that something is missing has faded. And maybe there is no nation or citizenry; they’re just territories mapped in place of family, in place of love, the infinite country.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country