Isabel Cañas > Quotes

“But if God is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, if He is three in one in the Trinity, then God knows nothing of loneliness. God knows nothing of standing with his back to a gray morning, of dropping to his knees in the dust.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“Words can damn or bless in equal measure, and are never to be used lightly.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“When a man makes a promise, he makes it on his honor. When a witch makes a promise, they feel it in their bones.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“It all made her want to shed her skin like the witch in Abuela’s story, let everything that made her a woman fall to the ground to be salted and ruined as she flew into the night, her bones bare and cold in the starlight.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“Colonialism carved the landscapes of our homes with ghosts, It left gaping wounds that still weep”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“His voice was like coming home. It loosened the unease that had curled in her chest all week.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“Our relationship was founded on one thing, and one thing only. My world was a dark, windowless room, and he was a door.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“my world was a dark, windowless room, and he was a door.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“All she had ever wanted, all she had ever lived for, was the inverse of this perverse imprisonment. To command her own life. To command her own body, to decide to whom it was given and when.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Possession of Alba Díaz

“He was a man of dust who served men of silver: it was impossible not to know his place in the world.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“She was there. She was with him, as real as she had been in life. He wanted to see her. He wanted to see her face more than he wanted water on a hot afternoon, more than he wanted rest after weeks in the saddle.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“Nena waited. After nine years apart, she still knew the rhythm of his speaking. She knew he had more to say, that he was searching for words or untangling a difficult thought. He was one of the few men she knew who spent time with his thoughts before speaking, even in the midst of an argument or excitement. It was one of the reasons she loved him.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“Fate had been unkind to me, but sometimes, its pettiness worked in my favor.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“Losing you,” she said, her dark eyes searching his face. “To you, Nena died. To her, you left. Those are two very different griefs.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“Just his luck that the sensation of dancing with her had branded itself on his daydreams. She was like a palmful of mercury: achingly lustrous in light or gloom, slipping cool through his fingers. Gone before he could catch his fist closed.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Possession of Alba Díaz

“Some of us are shackled to the world we are born in. We cannot change. We cannot leave.” The bitterness of her own voice tasted like ash. “We can only dream of bigger cages.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Possession of Alba Díaz

“Industry will rise and fall, men will scorch the earth and slaughter one another for emperors or republics, but they will always want drink.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“If other men were charcoal sketches, he was drawn in fine ink.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“It wasn’t that his heart stopped beating, no—it hurt too much to have simply stopped. It buckled in surprise. It collapsed in on itself. It pinned him to where he stood, for he was certain—deliriously certain—that he looked into the face of a ghost.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“could survive on the scraps from her table—had he not spent the last nine years starving? Anything she gave him now was a bounty. It would be fine.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“There were gods here, once. Maybe we ate them.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Possession of Alba Díaz

“A world without you. I am not brave enough.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“Should is an oddly powerful word. Shame and anger have a way of flying to it like coins to a lodestone.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“Family is all we have when things fall apart,”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“I was a sinner. I was a witch. I had sinned and would sin again, like all men. But whatever my decisions meant for life after death was between me and the Lord. All I could do was serve the home and people I loved using every gift I was born with.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“It is said that mortal life is empty without the love of God. That the ache of loneliness's wounds is assuaged by obedience to Him, for in serving God we encounter perfect love and are made whole. But if God is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, if He is three in one in the Trinity, then God knows nothing of loneliness...God knows nothing of loneliness, because God has never tasted companionship as mortals do: clinging to one another in darkness so complete and sharp it scrapes flesh from bone, trusting one another even as the Devil's breath blooms hot on their napes.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“I savored the memory of her voice. The way her whisper held a profane, exquisite power over me, how its brush could send an aching trill down my spine.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“Duérmete, niño, Duérmete ya, Que viene el Coco Y te comerá”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“Maybe, if you wanted, you could even live there too. With me. We could get married. Or something like that.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“I once heard it said that the words themselves are cursed. That the tale, once told, will evaporate like mercury. I can’t know that for certain. Perhaps it will. So lean in. Listen closely. I won’t be repeating myself.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Possession of Alba Díaz