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21 " All I do is fuck up. No one cares about who I really am. "
― Erika L. Sánchez , I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
22 " Maybe you’re too young to understand, Julia, but sometimes people don’t need the truth. "
23 " But how do we live with these secrets locked within us? How do we tie our shoes, brush our hair, drink coffee, wash the dishes, and go to sleep, pretending everything is fine? How do we laugh and feel happiness despite the buried things growing inside? How can we do that day after day? "
24 " Mexican nicknames are as cruel as they are hilarious. "
25 " If—when—I become rich, I want a library so big that I’ll need a ladder to reach all my books. I want first editions, too. I want ancient tomes that I have to handle with forceps and rubber gloves. "
26 " sometimes in life you don’t get to do what you want to do. Sometimes you have to deal with what’s given to you, shut up, and keep working. That’s it. "
27 " One of the things I hate most in life is people telling me to calm down, as if I’m some out-of-control lunatic who isn’t entitled to have feelings. "
28 " If there’s any place on earth where people should be allowed to cry as they watch their lives transform before them, it’s the airport. In a way, it’s kind of like purgatory, isn’t it? An in-between place. "
29 " I wonder what it’s like to clean houses all day and then come home and keep cleaning. I hate seeing her this way because it makes me feel so guilty—guilty for existing, guilty that she has to work like that for us. "
30 " I’ve read The Awakening a million times, but I find it comforting. My favorite character is the lady in black who follows Edna and Robert everywhere. I also love the book because I’m so much like Edna—nothing satisfies me, nothing makes me happy. I want too much out of life. I want to take it in my hands and squeeze and twist as much as I can from it. And it’s never enough. "
31 " Como me gusta la mala vida. Fuck. "
32 " Everything changes, for better or worse, whether we like it or not. Sometimes it's beautiful, and sometimes it fills us with terror. Sometimes both. "
33 " In some ways, I think that part of what I’m trying to accomplish—whether Amá really understands it or not—is to live for her, Apá, and Olga. It’s not that I’m living life for them, exactly, but I have so many choices they’ve never had, and I feel like I can do so much with what I’ve been given. What a waste their journey would be if I just settled for a dull, mediocre life. Maybe one day they’ll realize that. "
34 " But I know I have to go far away. I love my parents, of course, and I feel guilty for wanting to leave them, but living here would be too hard. I need to grow and explore, and they won’t let me. I feel like I’m being kept under a magnifying glass. "
35 " If I end up being an office lady who wears slacks and changes into white sneakers to walk home from the train, I'll just jump off a skyscraper. "
36 " Mothers are not supposed to be more beautiful than their daughters, and daughters are not supposed to die before their mothers. "
37 " You shouldn’t hate yourself so much. Everyone is messed up, even when it doesn’t seem like it. "
38 " Being compared to my mother makes me want to punch Lorena right in the mouth, "
39 " Other times I just lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling, imagining the kind of life I want to have when I get older. I picture myself at the top of the Eiffel Tower, climbing pyramids in Egypt, dancing in the streets in Spain, riding in a boat in Venice, and walking on the Great Wall of China. In these dreams, I’m a famous writer who wears flamboyant scarves and travels all around the world, meeting fascinating people. No one tells me what to do. I go wherever I want and do whatever I please. "
40 " One of the things I hate most in life is people telling me to calm down, as if I´m some out-of-control lunatic who isn´t entitled to have feelings "