Home > Author > Cinelle Barnes

Cinelle Barnes QUOTES

Cinelle Barnes QUOTES

1 " Books, art, fashion, history—were these not the things I had been erased from once I was deemed unfit to be a protected member of a state? Don’t we call them the humanities because they are supposedly what make us human, or acceptably human? Was being learned or worldly or talented not the currency that often bought me eye contact and first-name basis with guests and classmates and teachers? "

― Cinelle Barnes , Malaya: Essays on Freedom

2 " one rich girl’s trash is a poor girl’s dinner. "

― Cinelle Barnes , Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir

3 " We stood in front of that hill as if it were an altar, a consecrated knoll displaying the colonizer’s gifts to the bloodline: Christianity, education, and rank. "

― Cinelle Barnes , Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir

4 " Promise me, you’ll always remember, none of this is normal. But we were not made for normal, and for that, I am sorry, my warrior girl,” Papa said. “Be brave, be smart, be kind, and have faith. Remember that you are made of light. "

― Cinelle Barnes , Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir

5 " At breakfast, Mama didn’t talk about other people—not her aerobics friends, her cocktail party friends, her doctor friends, nor her sisters. Instead she talked about my hair, how pretty it was when it was up in a bun, and how it accentuated my jaw and forehead, the very facial features I got from her. She also talked about my cheekbones—which I got from Papa—how they were high but friendly, and how on them a kind smile could hang. "

― Cinelle Barnes , Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir

6 " Her parents came from a Philippine province called Bicol, "

― Cinelle Barnes , Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir

7 " There are seven M’s to building a dynasty,” Mr. Santiago said. “Money, machine, media, marriage, murder, myth, and mergers. "

― Cinelle Barnes , Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir

8 " It can’t be a joyride without a few bumps. No, it wouldn’t be a joyride at all. "

― Cinelle Barnes , Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir

9 " Words, images—where we three live. Home is, even here and even now, in the imagination. "

― Cinelle Barnes , Malaya: Essays on Freedom

10 " Mama decided against vaccines, appalled by the thought of seeing her already-unpretty baby lanced in her fatless thighs. "

― Cinelle Barnes , Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir

11 " incubus and succubus rolling around and lurching, tripping over their miseries. "

― Cinelle Barnes , Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir

12 " God was now speaking to me, telling me to keep the faith and promising me an escape. He spoke not through scripture nor through the retelling of parables by a priest, but through angsty, tormented Holden Caulfield, and all the other voices in the books I had read. At the turn of every page I breathed in, felt my heart tighten and release, and said, as the nuns next door repeatedly sang, “Amen. "

― Cinelle Barnes , Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir

13 " Wherever we’re headed, this is what we take with us, I thought. Love in the memories. And many, many ghosts. "

― Cinelle Barnes , Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir

14 " Maybe I amass these stories—about heroes and antiheroes—to tally how many times I am better and they are worse. "

― Cinelle Barnes , Malaya: Essays on Freedom

15 " when we show signs of anxiety such as nail-biting, fidgeting, stuttering, or hiding, that we are acting nervous because we care. There are these movements because there is thought. And every time I say this, we feel less guilty for having bodies that move the way they do. "

― Cinelle Barnes , Malaya: Essays on Freedom

16 " The monsoon gave me my first experience of candlelit living, of darkness being larger than our upper-class life. "

― Cinelle Barnes , Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir

17 " The pozo was a playground of a special sort, a mix between a water park for the young and a water source for the poor. "

― Cinelle Barnes , Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir

18 " The more he tried to save our empire, the more he sank into the middle-aged man’s abyss: failure, regret, and shame. "

― Cinelle Barnes , Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir

19 " My dire circumstances taught me to drink deep—to live a life of life: crying from the marrow, laughing from the gut, working with every muscle, acting and reacting with ten fingers, ten toes, five senses, and a sixth one . . . the heart. "

― Cinelle Barnes , Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir

20 " Downstairs was where I learned how to braid hair, how to skip rope, and how to eat balut—a common Southeast Asian street food: a developing duck embryo boiled alive in its shell. "

― Cinelle Barnes , Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir