Lorena Hughes > Quotes

“The truth was that this perfection, these beautiful objects surrounding me, held no meaning for me.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“It goes to show you,” the father said, shaking his head. “You can never fully trust people. You think you know someone, but then, as soon as you turn your back on them, they’ll stab you.” He pointed his finger at his elder son, as though teaching him a lesson that had escaped his younger one. “The only God out there is money. It’s the one everyone follows.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“I liked her immediately. She had one of those friendly faces that promised late nights, wine, and entertaining conversation. Under different circumstances, Montse and I could’ve become close friends.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“How different my sisters were. This life of luxury, of leisure, seemed to appeal to them very much. They probably wouldn’t give it up so easily.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“Artists all over Europe are currently creating movements as a reaction to photography. They don’t want to create realistic paintings anymore—why bother when a camera can do it in seconds? Photography offers fascinating possibilities. The idea of capturing a moment forever, the opportunity to see foreign lands, other people you would’ve never seen otherwise,”
― Lorena Hughes, Queen of the Valley

“Why did the sight of this woman, this suffering mother, produce so much guilt in me? She was the mother of my husband’s killer, for God’s sake! I shouldn’t feel anything other than contempt for her after she’d raised a criminal.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“the more I impersonated Cristóbal, the more it affected my psyche. I almost took offense at Angélica’s comment; the way she trivialized men and bundled them all together as if they were one entity. Living as a man was having strange effects on me. For one, it was forcing me to see them as individuals. Cristóbal and Martin, for example, were different in so many ways I could no longer subscribe to the “all men are the same” mentality.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“He’d raised two daughters, whom he probably loved more than me, while I’d waited for him to return to Spain for over two decades. But he was never planning to come back, I now realized. He’d made a new life without us, discarding us like an old newspaper. What an idiot I’d been—religiously writing all those letters to him, sitting for hours”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“What a foul mouth she had,” he told me after finishing a bottle of wine, “but she sure knew how to love a man.”

To say I was uncomfortable to hear my father speak like that about a woman was an understatement. The fact that it wasn’t my mother made it even worse.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“You should,” I said. “A woman like yourself shouldn’t be stuck in a small town all her life.” She stopped her shuffling and looked at me as if I’d spoken in Polish.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“The religious men I’d met in the past were neither friendly nor easygoing. They had a somberness about them, a permanent state of melancholy, but Alberto didn’t appear to take himself too seriously.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“The problem was that I wasn’t her, his firstborn; born in Europe to a Spanish mother. I wasn’t passionate about the land, about those damned cacao beans and chocolate like she was—even from afar. No, I was born in the New Continent; I was the daughter of a mestiza, his second not-so-legal wife and certainly not a full-blooded hidalga. It didn’t matter that I wore the latest fashion or how light my hair was (I washed it with manzanilla tea every other day to keep my blond streaks). It didn’t matter that I married a Frenchman”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“never here for our father, you didn’t tend to him when he was dying like we did. You didn’t clean his vomit, or his dirty sheets, or give the injections he needed. And yet, he loved you so, he never stopped talking about you.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“You’re ashamed of me because I’m not rich like your father, or elegant like your sister’s husband, or one of those fancy Europeans who roam around with their chins up, their fancy clothes and champagne glasses.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“know Angélica has many defects: she’s vain, arrogant, and ambitious, but she’s not a murderer. And Catalina, well, she’s a saint.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“The truth was my father already had a wife in Europe, but both of my parents acted as if his real wife was nothing but a long-lost relative.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“She had one of those friendly faces that promised late nights, wine, and entertaining conversation.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“I woke up like one of those heroines in a fairy tale: the sun filtering in through the translucent curtains, the sounds of the birds in the forest vivid and sharp, a soft sheet covering my nakedness.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“Why was he wasting his life here? I’d asked him, but he said he had a good reason, though he wouldn’t say what.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“I think good and evil lives inside every person. It’s a struggle we all live with. Whatever tendency one favors is what we are, I suppose.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“couldn’t deny that I’d been fortunate that my mother hadn’t found me an old, fat man to marry. Ours was certainly not a problem of attraction. Cristóbal turned to me, sighing. Ours was a problem of affinity.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“What was I supposed to do now with this grasshopper jumping up and down in my stomach? I could barely suppress my own desire to jump and scream myself. I never thought Juan liked me this way. From now on, I would always wear this dress. He said I looked older in it. I stared after him as he walked away with the snake.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“I’d always known—and yet, I couldn’t resist her. I was simply one more pawn in the long list of people who couldn’t deny Angélica any of her wishes.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“But you haven’t had dinner yet.” “So what? I’d rather eat a plant than stand another minute in the midst of so much arrogance.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“smiled. I knew all about the Indecency of Red. Even if I wanted a red gown, my mother would’ve never allowed me to wear it. It was scandalous, she would say, and would cancel the party at once. “I’m thinking about white.” “No. Too chaste.” “What’s wrong with that?”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“shrugged. I’d never had any expectations of inheriting. I supposed that was why I hadn’t been too surprised with my father’s last wishes. “I know you’re not an ambitious woman and you’re more content with . . . spiritual matters. But don’t you see that a big injustice has been committed on our behalf?”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“you serious? What did you want me to do with my inheritance? Give it away? Forgive me for looking out for our well-being. Forgive me for wanting to get us out of that tiny apartment and move to a splendid plantation in one of the top exporting countries in the world!”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“She never listened to anyone but herself. And yet, I enjoyed her company more than anybody else’s.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“So, the real question is what makes someone good, their actions or their motivations?”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter

“Franco was the son of one of my father’s workers, so my siblings didn’t give him the time of day. It wasn’t done on purpose. They just knew that there were implied rules to follow in our micro-society. But I didn’t mind so much.”
― Lorena Hughes, The Spanish Daughter