Xóchitl González > Quotes

“You must remember, mijo, even people who were once your sails can become your anchors.”
― Xóchitl González, Olga Dies Dreaming

“Benevolent colonialism is still colonialism.”
― Xóchitl González, Olga Dies Dreaming

“The greatest fool is the man of color who defines his success by the White Man's standard”
― Xóchitl González, Olga Dies Dreaming

“No, when I looked in his eyes, what I saw was the most dangerous thing of all in a man: insecurity. Because they will crawl over and push down anyone around them in their desperate thrashing to find themselves comfortably affirmed at the top.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“Of course, the problem is that we don’t live in a world just of women. Not only do men exist, but we are drawn to them and, for complex reasons, they do not treasure time in the same way that we do. It may have to do with an inability to face mortality, or needs of ego, or maybe it simply has to do with the fact that they don’t hear the ticking of a biological clock. What I can say with certainty is that a man has no problem wasting time, especially that of a woman. And they manage to do so in such insidious ways we often don’t notice that it’s happening until it’s too late.”
― Xóchitl González, Olga Dies Dreaming

“Human will is a particularly powerful magic. Alchemy happens when a person truly decides something; when a mind is changed.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“Debt is one of The Man’s great tools for keeping people of color oppressed.”
― Xóchitl González, Olga Dies Dreaming

“It's a myth about motherhood, Olga felt, that the time in utero imbues mothers with a lifelong understanding of their children. Yes, they know their essences, this she didn't doubt, but mothers are still humans who eventually form their own ideas of both who their kids are and who they think they should be. Inevitably there were disparities.”
― Xóchitl González, Olga Dies Dreaming

“A man has no problem wasting time, especially that of a woman. And they manage to do so in such insidious ways we often don't notice that it's happening until it's too late.”
― Xóchitl González, Olga Dies Dreaming

“In Olga’s heart there was a pin-sized hole of infinite depth that made every day slightly more painful than it needed to be. She thought of it, this hole, as a birth defect. The space where, in a normal heart, a mother’s love was meant to be.”
― Xóchitl González, Olga Dies Dreaming

“They were nice people, generally, but their litany of problems, real or imagined, never waned. Nor did their sense of urgency around getting these problems resolved, their allergy to even a moment’s discomfort quite severe.”
― Xóchitl González, Olga Dies Dreaming

“It’s dangerous at your young age to be surrounded by people who don’t value who you are. Who don’t understand you. A child can become lost.”
― Xóchitl González, Olga Dies Dreaming

“Because I understand all the problems, I just fundamentally don’t believe we can fix them. However, I fully support those on the bottom taking as much advantage of the top as humanly possible.”
― Xóchitl González, Olga Dies Dreaming

“In a woman's world, time is the most precious commodity. and we don't have it to waste.”
― Xóchitl González, Olga Dies Dreaming

“And that revelation sparked one that was even more painful: the reason that Raquel subconsciously believed that Nick knew “better” than her was that it was Nick’s point of view that had been affirmed and internalized by the white walls of every museum or gallery they had ever been told was worth looking at.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“My irritation began mounting as he and Arnold volleyed Leslie's unchallenging, simplistic questions. "Do you feel intimidated by women taking up more space in the art world?" What fucking space? I thought. We were given the corners men deemed too dark and dusty. "How do you think the softness of women's work helps to reinforce the linearity of men's art practices?" Who the fuck said women's art existed to do or say anything about men's art practices?

"Leslie, this might be controversial to say here," Jack said, with the air of a provocateur, and I could feel the room -- the men, especially -- lean in toward him, eager to lap up the crap he was about to serve. "Because I admire what you've done. But should this gallery even exist?”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“Never remembering that when they ask for your time it's always before and after they accomplished what they wanted to do with their day.”
― Xóchitl González, Olga Dies Dreaming

“For some, the distance between deciding and doing is a wide gulf. I’m fortunate not to be one of those people.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“That he thought he could do something so dramatic—so violating—and get away with it; presume her to be grateful for it, even—was only possible because he had told her, in ways great and small, that he knew best and she had signaled that he was correct.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“Exchanges that had cut and left me bleeding, with my best stuff—confidence, clarity—pooling down, away from me, onto the floor. But not that night. No. Because that day I had decided to reclaim my might; to cease to be shrunk. And in my decision, I’d grown a new version of myself. My new skin thick like coconut shells, impervious to his attempts to crack my joy.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“Be angry at the system, Raquel,” Belinda had told her that day, “and then see how you can fix it. I’ve been very hell-bent on showcasing emerging artists from underseen backgrounds, but I’ve not paid enough attention to connecting the dots. To correcting this lie that you were taught and that I was taught: that art started with some white guys in ancient Greece and was passed on and made better and better exclusively at the hands of white men.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“You know,” she continued, “I used to feel so smart. Before I got here, you know? I would just blurt out opinions. I believed in what I was thinking. And now, I don’t know. If I don’t have fucking footnotes and firsthand sources and shit ready, I’m afraid to talk.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“I was disgusted with myself for trying so hard. Felt a need—an urge really—to make amends. To prostrate myself, in some way, for having gone to such pains to become one with a place that rejected me over and over and over again.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“... if you did nothing for the rest of your life of any note, you'd be more than enough.”
― Xóchitl González, Olga Dies Dreaming

“Not herself before the haircut, or before Nick, but a version that existed long before that, even. Raquel before she even got here. One that had not suffered a bruised ego and feelings of deficiency and a debilitating sense of anxiety. One who was not terrified of getting something wrong or missing a step or who held, even loosely, the axiom that she was undeserving”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“You’ve been so obsessed with ‘helping’ me and you actually have no idea how to help yourself.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“She wanted to know the size and shape of the hole that had been left in his heart that required so many objects to fill it.”
― Xóchitl González, Olga Dies Dreaming

“And we would yell and not speak for days and what the fuck is wrong with conflict sometimes? It makes your brain better!! It makes you fight harder, it makes you more convinced in what you believe and who you are!”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“Girl, I don’t need to be Puerto Rican to want to help out. That’s the problem right now. People think they’re only responsible for people exactly like them. I don’t feel that way. They left my people to die after Katrina. It’s the same. Like I said, it’s on us to help each other.”
― Xóchitl González, Olga Dies Dreaming

“And he looks at us like we’re there to clean his studio.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last