The Spanish Daughter Quotes

“The truth was that this perfection, these beautiful objects surrounding me, held no meaning for me.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“It goes to show you,” the father said, shaking his head. “You can never fully trust people. You think you know someone, but then, as soon as you turn your back on them, they’ll stab you.” He pointed his finger at his elder son, as though teaching him a lesson that had escaped his younger one. “The only God out there is money. It’s the one everyone follows.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“I liked her immediately. She had one of those friendly faces that promised late nights, wine, and entertaining conversation. Under different circumstances, Montse and I could’ve become close friends.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“The religious men I’d met in the past were neither friendly nor easygoing. They had a somberness about them, a permanent state of melancholy, but Alberto didn’t appear to take himself too seriously.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“It was a house that played with shapes and styles, a house with the power of making you question if you were inside or out.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“Angélica accepted the handshake, though it looked like their hands barely touched. Instead of a shake, it was more like a polite squeeze done through their gloves. How different were the handshakes I’d received from men in my Cristóbal persona. They had been firmer and had transmitted a genuine openness that I’d never perceived in women, even in my closest relationships. But first, there had been challenge in the men’s gazes, an assessment of sorts that seemed to end with the truce of the handshake.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“the more I impersonated Cristóbal, the more it affected my psyche. I almost took offense at Angélica’s comment; the way she trivialized men and bundled them all together as if they were one entity. Living as a man was having strange effects on me. For one, it was forcing me to see them as individuals. Cristóbal and Martin, for example, were different in so many ways I could no longer subscribe to the “all men are the same” mentality.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“I lowered my face, such was my shame, but they all took it as humility.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“What a foul mouth she had,” he told me after finishing a bottle of wine, “but she sure knew how to love a man.”

To say I was uncomfortable to hear my father speak like that about a woman was an understatement. The fact that it wasn’t my mother made it even worse.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“She never listened to anyone but herself. And yet, I enjoyed her company more than anybody else’s.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“Soledad’s gaze was lost in a mysterious spot behind my head.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“What was I supposed to do now with this grasshopper jumping up and down in my stomach? I could barely suppress my own desire to jump and scream myself. I never thought Juan liked me this way. From now on, I would always wear this dress. He said I looked older in it. I stared after him as he walked away with the snake.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“You should,” I said. “A woman like yourself shouldn’t be stuck in a small town all her life.” She stopped her shuffling and looked at me as if I’d spoken in Polish.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“The only reason men don’t approach you is that they don’t want to be damned for eternity.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“She had one of those friendly faces that promised late nights, wine, and entertaining conversation.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“I think good and evil lives inside every person. It’s a struggle we all live with. Whatever tendency one favors is what we are, I suppose.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“So, the real question is what makes someone good, their actions or their motivations?”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“Spanish woman who allegedly developed the cacao bean roaster in 1847. Her name was María Purificación García.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“never here for our father, you didn’t tend to him when he was dying like we did. You didn’t clean his vomit, or his dirty sheets, or give the injections he needed. And yet, he loved you so, he never stopped talking about you.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“I stood up. I didn’t want to hear another word. I didn’t want to hear how much he loved and desired her and how he’d been playing with me, using me, or worse yet, helping her, even if he denied it now.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“Well, that’s a rotten lie meant to cover up her own dishonesty. Do you know why I really fired her?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I found her snooping through my things, and it was not the first time. I’d caught her going through my papers once before and I warned her that if she ever did that again, I would fire her.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“It also explained why Martin was a still a bachelor. A man his age would’ve found a woman to settle with by now instead of fulfilling his urges with prostitutes until Angélica could come to him during Corazones night.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“I woke up like one of those heroines in a fairy tale: the sun filtering in through the translucent curtains, the sounds of the birds in the forest vivid and sharp, a soft sheet covering my nakedness.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“We kissed with the urgency of two people who’d been thirsty for too long and had finally stumbled upon a glass of water. Martin’s kisses had an unexpected tenderness to them. He was gentle, yet vehement. His hand traveled softly over my breasts, his lips on my neck.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“was starting to think it was no coincidence that Martin always avoided going into details about his past.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“Why did the sight of this woman, this suffering mother, produce so much guilt in me? She was the mother of my husband’s killer, for God’s sake! I shouldn’t feel anything other than contempt for her after she’d raised a criminal.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“I’m not here to judge you,” I said. “I’m . . . human, too, and I understand that the expectations the Roman Catholic Church places on young men are, for the most part, unreasonable.” I gripped Cristóbal’s pocket watch. “I don’t know if you’re aware but Mayra lost her job with Aquilino.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“You’re ashamed of me because I’m not rich like your father, or elegant like your sister’s husband, or one of those fancy Europeans who roam around with their chins up, their fancy clothes and champagne glasses.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“Why was he wasting his life here? I’d asked him, but he said he had a good reason, though he wouldn’t say what.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“He nodded. Under different circumstances, I would admire my sister’s audacity to behave as she wanted in spite of what our father, or anybody else, desired. But not when it could also mean that she would hurt her own sister to get her way.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter