Serena Burdick > Quotes

“Over time Luella would discover, as I had, as her daughter would, that we can’t outrun ourselves.”
― Serena Burdick, The Girls with No Names

“But life’s a blind business, none of us can see up ahead, and none of us would move forward if we could. So,”
― Serena Burdick, The Girls with No Names

“We're all hurt and broken ... You're no different. You walk around with that sorry face, as if you're the only one's seen hardship. Have you tried looking at anyone else's face? Everyone in here's been put through the wringer.”
― Serena Burdick, The Girls with No Names

“There was freedom that women in the lower classes of Montmartre had, freedoms she was denied.”
― Serena Burdick, Girl in the Afternoon: A Novel of Paris

“But life’s a blind business, none of us can see up ahead, and none of us would move forward if we could.”
― Serena Burdick, The Girls with No Names

“Maybe saving his client and her daughter is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to him.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“It is a promise no parent should ever make.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“He was a father who related to his children by dominating them. I knew only to fear him, to wait in a cold sweat for either punishment or approval. I have no idea what it would have been like to know him as an adult.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“They demand economic and political reform and then go and use the same violence and corruption as Machado’s regime to get it. It’s hypocritical. Politics in this country has always been about ascendency. There’s no heroics in it. No national unity, no purpose. It’s just men vying for power.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“This is familiar to me. I watched men challenge you your whole life, each one of your four husbands, in their own way, pushing you to the edge. Despite your effort to understand them, to please them, it was, in the end, your unwillingness to be controlled or possessed that got you killed.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“Better to be noticed for originality than not noticed at all,”
― Serena Burdick, Girl in the Afternoon: A Novel of Paris

“That means my career is over? I can’t sing because I am a mother and wife? That is ridiculous! We never discussed this. You said I would sing here.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“She’d seen hardship. No sense falling into it if you could just as easily pull yourself out. It”
― Serena Burdick, Girl in the Afternoon: A Novel of Paris

“was five years old when I saw my father quartered in front of me for not hailing to the king of Spain.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“Rubenia pulls away, nodding shyly and giving me a wet kiss on the cheek, her lips velvety soft. I can’t think of anyone back home who would take in strangers, clothe them and feed them and kiss them when they leave.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“This is no different. It’s the oppressed fighting back just as they did with Spain. Machado changed the constitution so he could maintain power. Por amor de Cristo, he ran for reelection against himself!”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“Pakanka ir trupučio vilties, kad ji mus apakintų.”
― Serena Burdick, The Girls with No Names

“Let’s promise we’ll never be tiresome or strict or boring like Oneila. We’ll be spirited and interesting and beautiful until we die.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“Machado’s closed the high schools as well as the university. Students and professors have been beaten and arrested. They’re left with no choice but to fight back. Armed action is the only thing that’s ever proved successful at ridding this country of corrupt power.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“Sally moved on down the hall, acting as if she hadn’t heard. Her ability to completely ignore a question was impressive.”
― Serena Burdick, The Stolen Book of Evelyn Aubrey

“Kids getting in the way of business negotiations annoy him, and grumpy old men who tell me to stop talking annoy me, so we’re clear with each other.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“As she listened to him, she wondered if he believed all the things he said, or if he just said them to be liked. Last”
― Serena Burdick, Girl in the Afternoon: A Novel of Paris

“She said little, but listened with quiet interest. It sets the young at ease to know their family history is made up of mistakes. Makes them feel less flawed.”
― Serena Burdick, The Girls with No Names

“He wondered how many children a man could lose in a lifetime before he no longer wanted to go on living.”
― Serena Burdick, Girl in the Afternoon: A Novel of Paris

“Life, as far as I can tell, is a series of events best left untold, and yet here we are.”
― Serena Burdick, The Girls with No Names

“With our accent and dark hair, it doesn’t matter where we come from...Cuba, Spain, Peru...it’s all just México to them.” “I gave up correcting people that I’m Cuban long ago,” I told her once, as we commiserated the ache of betraying our heritage with a shrug and a laugh.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“love singing, Nina, and those Vegas hotels are no place for a young girl.” I take a sip of my drink, sweet and thick and so cold it hurts my teeth. “Drink up, and stop talking nonsense.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“He will kick Alfonso out of this house. His daughter’s safety is in jeopardy, and if you are too pigheaded to see that, Chu Chu will make you.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana

“The mistake she made was in thinking that this would be enough, filling her canvases, filling her mind, filling up time. It wasn’t. A part of her was restless and unsettled, expectant. Waiting, always, for something to happen. And”
― Serena Burdick, Girl in the Afternoon: A Novel of Paris

“What I think, when you hang up, is that I have ruined your marriage and that you will marry again, and this time you will make sure I am never around.”
― Serena Burdick, Find Me in Havana