Sonora Quotes

She crooned on until her cigarette was gone. The ash in the wind blew around us like hesitant snow. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

My father insisted I eat red meat. 'You'll lose your brain without food,' he said. A meal to him without beef was starvation. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

true courage is what it takes to make yourself do something you're afraid to do. ~ Sonora Carver

People think that in this business you don't have to have any brains. They're wrong. The first time you stop thinking, you're dead. ~ Sonora Carver

Cutters read the land like a text. They search the manuscript of the ground for irregularities in its narration. They know the plots and the images by heart. They can see where the punctuation goes. They are landscape grammarians, got the Ph.D. in reading dirt. ~ Luis Alberto Urrea

She carried a scabbedover wound on her hip where her mate had bitten her two weeks before somewhere in the mountains of Sonora. He'd bitten her because she would not leave him. Standing with one forefoot in the jaws of a steeltrap and snarling at her to drive her off where she lay just beyond the reach of the chain. She'd flattened her ears and whined and she would not leave. In the morning they came on horses. She watched from a slope a hundred yards away as he stood up to meet them. ~ Cormac McCarthy

For those I come from, there is nothing more devouring than the feeling of want for home, the feeling of need for home. We are all waiting for a form of transport, a ship, a saucer to carry us out of the too-dark night. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

With the years, we become even more ourselves and call this change. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

After considering the matter from every angle I decided that the best strategy I could adopt would be to treat my blindness as if it were a minor detail rather than a major catastrophe. I would thus be turning the tables on my handicap; in fact, striking at its very potency. I was careful, however, not to delude myself; the way would not be easy. Although I was over the wall, there was a wilderness beyond it, one totally unknown to me, and I would have to remind myself constantly that the manner in which I traveled through this wilderness depended a great deal on my attitude. ~ Sonora Carver

If a man who has a million dollars walks down the street and sees some valuable article in a shopwindow that he wants to buy, he goes in and buys it without any thought of what it costs, but if a man without any money sees the same article and feels the same desire to own it he immediately realizes he can't have it because he hasn't the money. The point is, if you have it you don't think about it, but if you don't have it the realization is often thrust upon you. ~ Sonora Carver

We are all cursed. We live in the era of the curse. A world that cannot be fixed. The best thing would be an alien ship. Another planet. One with three moons. But you, I saw you in my dreams. I saw you coming. You came to heal my broken heart. That's why I named you Ahlam. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

They hike almost three miles without incident, and it's amazing to watch the colors leach back into the desert after the day's blanching. There's a moment, Lydia realizes, or no, more than a moment - a span of perhaps fifteen minutes just at twilight - when the desert is the most perfect place that exists. The temperature, the light, the colors, all hang and linger at some unflawed precipice, like the cars of a roller coaster ticking ever so slowly over their apex before the crash. The light droops ever farther from the sky, and Lydia can smell the heat of the day wicking away from her skin. ~ Jeanine Cummins

I am rich in memory, and as long as I have it to rehearse and define I am not really blind. ~ Sonora Carver

The earth spins further from help. Beyond us the heart monitors go on, the fluorescent lights buzz, the commentators shout, the casino leaves fall into the desert, sirens blare. But all we hear is the rain. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

One day you look in the mirror and you see your parents' sadness in your eyes. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

I slowly lost any dream for myself. No one warned me of this, that the stars in New York can infect the light inside, that they can trap you in their shadow. Dylan was of course a star. He had achieved the thing we all came to New York wanting. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

The instruments were all half desired, half forgotten. It was as if they were left behind by a ghost right in the middle of playing. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

I don't think I'm from this galaxy at all. I believe I came from the Andromeda galaxy, not so far, but far enough. Maybe that's why I'm an outcast.' He drew the spiral of Andromeda close to the Milky Way, almost touching. Then he pointed to Andromeda in the night sky above us.

'Maybe that's where I'm from too,' my father said. We could still see the stars. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

My parents, grandmother and brother were teachers. My mother taught Latin and French and was the school librarian. My father taught geography and a popular class called Family Living, the precursor to Sociology, which he eventually taught. My grandmother was a beloved one-room school teacher at Knob School, near Sonora in Larue County, Ky. ~ Sam Abell

Sometimes in the corner of my eye, I saw a girl running through the loft. A see-through girl, a silhouette. She looked the way the world looks without my glasses. Vaguely hued, indistinct. She looked the way a body looks underwater, lost in the blur of bubble and wave. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

New York was always so beautiful in the very crux of parting with it. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

I was born walking, born in the nowhere between galaxies. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

All of us, while apparently separate and distinct individuals, are but the molecules of which the body of humanity is composed, and each of us feels a compulsion to function as a part of the whole. Consciously or subconsciously we long to be useful and accepted, regarded with favor. Loss of sight does not change this, I discovered; I needed to find a way to belong. ~ Sonora Carver

This is it. This is how I always saw heaven, always by the sea, always by night, always in the dark. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

We both knew no bounds to our escapism. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

You and I, your mother, Ahlam, we are from up there,' my father continued. 'We come from the stunning stars. We were just born in the wrong place. We were meant to live on another planet. The people who come to the desert are those who know this, deep inside of them, we are from up there. From far, far away. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

My father, a Palestinian, and my mother, an Israeli, met in a bar in New York. Their encounter was a blue shift. An anomaly. A collision. In the end, I understand, it is only for this we live. All I ever wanted was to love. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

It seems to me that everyone has to make adjustments to life, that we all have our limitations, but that if we are wise we do not make other people miserable by concentrating on these limitations. One of the fundamental responsibilities of every human being in his relationship with others is to create happiness, not destroy it. We also have responsibilities toward ourselves. The prime one is not to make ourselves miserable by dwelling on something we can do nothing about. ~ Sonora Carver

My brain came alight with tenderness for her. I felt so sorry for everything. I yearned to embrace her, kiss her even, to stay with her, always her, my sister, my friend to the end. It was a story after all, even if a sick one. It was completely ours. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

I looked at Laura . . . and wondered at how many lives before this life we might have known together. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

For me the most world-shaking event in my life began with nothing more than a mild-mannered want ad read by my mother, for the upshot of the matter was that she wouldn't quit talking about it... ~ Sonora Carver

I recently had my graphic novel SONORA PASS reviewed by KIRKUS.
My honest and humble opinion is that the reviewer assigned by KIRKUS should stick to reviewing PHONE BOOKS ! ~ Jaime Olmos

When you are rich, your past disappears. You get everything you want when you want it . . . Everyone wants to know you. Everyone wants to be your friend. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

There is the body of history ever atop of us, and the body of memory rustling within us. Between the two, we are crushed. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

Don't fall in love or let anyone's life become more important than your own. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

Blindness is not so much a tragedy as it is a damn nuisance. ~ Sonora Carver

I once expected to spend seven years walking around the world on foot. I walked from Mexico to Panama where the road ended before an almost uninhabited swamp called the Choco Colombiano. Even today there is no road. Perhaps it is time for me to resume my wanderings where I left off as a tropical tramp in the slums of Panama. Perhaps like Ambrose Bierce who disappeared in the desert of Sonora I may also disappear. But after being in all mankind it is hard to come to terms with oblivion - not to see hundreds of millions of Chinese with college diplomas come aboard the locomotive of history - not to know if someone has solved the riddle of the universe that baffled Einstein in his futile efforts to make space, time, gravitation and electromagnetism fall into place in a unified field theory - never to experience democracy replacing plutocracy in the military-industrial complex that rules America - never to witness the day foreseen by Tennyson 'when the war-drums no longer and the battle-flags are furled, in the parliament of man, the federation of the world.'

I may disappear leaving behind me no worldly possessions - just a few old socks and love letters, and my windows overlooking Notre-Dame for all of you to enjoy, and my little rag and bone shop of the heart whose motto is 'Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise.' I may disappear leaving no forwarding address, but for all you know I may still be walking among you on my vagabond journey aro ~ George Whitman

He could guide anyone to the point of no return. He'd corral them with poetry, music, invoking the alcoholic gods that all died young. But we were so young, we didn't know we had anything we would miss. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

My loves have always been seared with this singing, this singing written by death, the way some lands have always been crippled by war. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

I asked the boy who wept what it felt like, crystal meth, the prettiest name for a drug besides heroin. Crystal methamphetamine. His head fell back. He closed his eyes, then opened them. 'Come on, you know . . . you're just high as fuck.' Then in a dramatic whisper: 'Everything goes silent like a midnight of the mind. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

I inherited this longing. I was addicted to it. And so I was at home with those who wanted and never had enough. I was at home in the places that could never be. The places found only in dreams. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

I saw Sonora before me, so otherworldly, so desolate, some cast-out mistress on the pale blue planet, and longed suddenly to stay. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

I am conscious of an indestructible, indomitable force, a constant and abiding truth that is stronger than any human being. This presence gives me strength and courage to face whatever comes, and I do not fear life or anything in it. On the contrary, I relish life and know that there is still much for me to do and to know. ~ Sonora Carver

This day has already happened; this day will not end. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi