Esmeralda Santiago

“Ana had experienced reactions like Ramon's in the mirrored salons of Sevilla society, in the waxed halls of the Convento de las…

— Esmeralda Santiago

Another train will come. Why rush? Why worry? Why go crazy? Another train will come. And sure enough, another train going my…

— Esmeralda Santiago

“In the Spanish-speaking Americas, Christmas is much more than a one-day event followed by a staggering credit card bill. The festivities last…

— Esmeralda Santiago

“There were more fights, more arguments, more yelling in the night, more long absences. Until it seemed as if anything would be…

— Esmeralda Santiago

“They have no achievements of their own. They've made nothing, created nothing, worked at nothing. They will leave no trace that they…

— Esmeralda Santiago

For me, the person I was becoming when we left was erased, and another one was created.

— Esmeralda Santiago

Tell me who you walk with, and I'll tell you who you are.

— Esmeralda Santiago

“How can you know what you're capable of if you don't embrace the unknown?”

— Esmeralda Santiago

In the twenty-one years I lived with my mother, we moved at least twenty times.

— Esmeralda Santiago

How can you know what you're capable of if you don't embrace the unkown?

— Esmeralda Santiago

“It seemed too complicated, as if each one of us were really two people, one who was loved and the official one…

— Esmeralda Santiago

We're always going to have prejudices ... I don't think we can change society. You can only change individual by individual. And…

— Esmeralda Santiago

“Envy, Doña Lola had once said, eats at you from the inside and turns your eyes green when you look at the…

— Esmeralda Santiago

“It' her life, and she' in the middle of it.”

— Esmeralda Santiago

What doesn't kill you, makes you fat.

— Esmeralda Santiago

“We came to Macun when I was four, to a rectangle of rippled metal sheets on stilts hovering in the middle of…

— Esmeralda Santiago

People think [immigration] is only about the dollar, but it's so much more complex. This is a place where you can reinvent…

— Esmeralda Santiago

“The night before I left my mother, I wrote a letter. ”

— Esmeralda Santiago

if you don't exist in the arts of a culture, you're invisible. The arts are what express the soul of who we…

— Esmeralda Santiago

I learned you pay for your happiness. That's why I don't expect to be happy all the time. I'd rather be surprised…

— Esmeralda Santiago