Car F. Romero > Quotes

“Point is, there comes a time you need to deal with reality. I reached a certain age when I had to accept it wasn’t so easy to find my one true amor, accept that I would never father any children, or probably ever have a home of my own. And I learned to be satisfied with that. As the doors of your life start to close one by one, there is a tendency to romanticize the past, the what-ifs and that what-could-be. That, my dear Dan, is just death of a different kind.”
― Car F. Romero, The El Camino: A Novel

“With the added years of my own emotional maturity, I now realized how selfish I had been that entire era, how utterly deluded in my perspective, how I had failed to read any of the real signals Theresa had given me, or to even treat her as the beautiful, complicated, uncertain human being she was, rather than the ideal of her I had held in my head.”
― Car F. Romero, The El Camino: A Novel

“The night before my final day on duty, I tapped the grandfather clock for my rounds as I always did, growing strangely nostalgic for the now-silent building. It had caused me a great deal of stress over the prior three months, but I realized then how well I knew every inch of it. Perhaps that is what belonging to a place meant. Not necessarily loving it, but knowing it as well as you knew yourself.”
― Car F. Romero, The El Camino: A Novel

“And somehow, in telling these long-kept secrets of mine, I felt a strange comfort as well. Keeping the worst of yourself locked away is not always the best way to keep moving forward.”
― Car F. Romero, The El Camino: A Novel

“Catholic medieval memento mori symbolism. ‘Remember, you shall too die.’ Native iconography. Worship of the dead. Because they understood we don’t only live for just ourselves. We live for all who came before. All who will come after. For those we love today. Everything is connected.”
― Car F. Romero, The El Camino: A Novel

“The El Camino gifted me with knowledge that night, a secret knowledge most people were blissfully unaware of. I had seen how my life, how all my lives would play out. I witnessed myself doomed to the same mistakes, the same selfishness, the same stupidity over and over again. It was a certainty that no matter what path I took, I was always destined to end up alone. Not because of any bad luck or ill fortune from the world, but because of the flaws inherent in me as a human being.”
― Car F. Romero, The El Camino: A Novel

“They said he was buried weeks ago.” I nodded. “Back in July. His mom also passed away right afterward, so that just compounded the family chaos. His sister reckoned she died of a broken heart.” “Tragedy breeds more tragedy,” Martina said, studying the smiling face of Old William in the photograph on top of the shrine. I still couldn’t quite imagine the two of them as an item, but that was love in the end. It could tie you to people you would never expect. “Father Time is undefeated,” I said. “Old William told that to me once. It was why he tried to enjoy his life to the fullest. And live without regrets.” “That’s a nice thing to say,” she said. “But reality is always messier than we would like.”
― Car F. Romero, The El Camino: A Novel

“In truth, I killed the real Theresa in my mind that day, replacing her with a copy spawned from my own head, a perfect duplicate who shared none of the inner qualities of the real thing, only reflecting back what I wanted her to be. And while this copy would be filled in over the years, looking back, that was the moment I already lost her, before our relationship even began.”
― Car F. Romero, The El Camino: A Novel

“Father Time remains undefeated. So it’s not him you should be angling to beat. It’s that gnawing cry for purpose that will eat straight through you if you let it.”
― Car F. Romero, The El Camino: A Novel