“We wanted more. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped our spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots. We turned up the knob on the TV until our… — Justin Torres Copy Share Image
Sometimes I would be very upset because my memories are very murky from my childhood, but there are certain emotional memories or emotional truths… — Justin Torres Copy Share Image
“Always more, always hungrily scratching for more. But there were times, quiet moments, when our mother was sleeping, when she hadn’t slept in two… — Justin Torres Copy Share Image
“I’m an adult,” the boy says. “I got rights.” “Everybody’s got rights. A man tied to a bed got rights. A man down in… — Justin Torres Copy Share Image
As you become an adult, shame gets introduced and reintroduced constantly to you. So where something that, to a child, just is what it… — Justin Torres Copy Share Image
I don't think that any family has a function. I just think that a family is. It just exists. — Justin Torres Copy Share Image
Animals don't think in terms of victims and villains, or good and bad, or evil, or shame. — Justin Torres Copy Share Image
“All that pent up longing,” he says, “all that desire to flail and flap around. Them wings have needs.” — Justin Torres Copy Share Image
We hit and we kept on hitting; we were allowed to be what we were, frightened and vengeful — little animals, clawing at what… — Justin Torres Copy Share Image
This is your heritage,' he said, as if from this dance we could know about his own childhood, about the flavor and grit of… — Justin Torres Copy Share Image
“WE ALL THREE sat at the kitchen table in our raincoats, and Joel smashed tomatoes with a small rubber mallet. We had seen it… — Justin Torres Copy Share Image
“They weren't scared, or dispossessed, or fragile. They were possible.” — Justin Torres Copy Share Image
What we gotta do is, we gotta figure out a way to reverse gravity, so that we all fall upward, through the clouds and… — Justin Torres Copy Share Image
