Sonora Quotes

“They hike almost three miles without incident, and it's amazing to watch the colors leach back into the desert after the day's blanching. There's a moment, Lydia realizes, or no, more than a moment - a span of perhaps fifteen minutes just at twilight - when the desert is the most perfect place that exists. The temperature, the light, the colors, all hang and linger at some unflawed precipice, like the cars of a roller coaster ticking ever so slowly over their apex before the crash. The light droops ever farther from the sky, and Lydia can smell the heat of the day wicking away from her skin.”
― Jeanine Cummins, American Dirt

“I was born walking, born in the nowhere between galaxies.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“We would survive even ourselves, as long as we were together.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“This is it. This is how I always saw heaven, always by the sea, always by night, always in the dark.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“It was so pure, the snow, the purest of all powders, I thought, so pure it must be from elsewhere, from another planet.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“I have forgiven Sonora. I have forgiven New York, forsaken the recursion of history. But I do not yet know how to forgive myself.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“One day you look in the mirror and you see your parents' sadness in your eyes.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“What if we love the black hole in the center of all things? What if we are people like that? People who love to be cursed?”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“My father, a Palestinian, and my mother, an Israeli, met in a bar in New York. Their encounter was a blue shift. An anomaly. A collision. In the end, I understand, it is only for this we live. All I ever wanted was to love.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“I loved the abandoned subway stations, rushing past the darkened platforms, the sprawl of graffiti like old letters. Letters left by ghosts.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“My brain came alight with tenderness for her. I felt so sorry for everything. I yearned to embrace her, kiss her even, to stay with her, always her, my sister, my friend to the end. It was a story after all, even if a sick one. It was completely ours.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“You and I, your mother, Ahlam, we are from up there,' my father continued. 'We come from the stunning stars. We were just born in the wrong place. We were meant to live on another planet. The people who come to the desert are those who know this, deep inside of them, we are from up there. From far, far away.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“New York was always so beautiful in the very crux of parting with it.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“I don't think I'm from this galaxy at all. I believe I came from the Andromeda galaxy, not so far, but far enough. Maybe that's why I'm an outcast.' He drew the spiral of Andromeda close to the Milky Way, almost touching. Then he pointed to Andromeda in the night sky above us.

'Maybe that's where I'm from too,' my father said. We could still see the stars.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“The bad angels were the jinn, and the good angels were the jinn too, and we spoke to them both in the desert. In Arabic, jinn has the same root as the word for paradise, jenna. The word for jinn and the word for paradise both have the same root as the word for madness, junun. To be close to the jinn is to be close to madness, is to be even closer to paradise.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“There is no moon. The stars have risen and fallen and given way to a new spread, to the smeared heart of our Milky Way.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“Cutters read the land like a text. They search the manuscript of the ground for irregularities in its narration. They know the plots and the images by heart. They can see where the punctuation goes. They are landscape grammarians, got the Ph.D. in reading dirt.”
― Luis Alberto Urrea, The Devil's Highway: A True Story

“We both knew no bounds to our escapism.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“She crooned on until her cigarette was gone. The ash in the wind blew around us like hesitant snow.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“I wanted to walk faster, to run, far as possible from her, from my entire life, from the first day I ever saw her always just a few steps ahead.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“This day has already happened; this day will not end.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“The earth spins further from help. Beyond us the heart monitors go on, the fluorescent lights buzz, the commentators shout, the casino leaves fall into the desert, sirens blare. But all we hear is the rain.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“Through my sudden tears, the train lights smeared like shooting stars. Lying before the rippling blue window, below the slurred lights of the world above, it was as if we were underwater.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“We remained talking, fighting gently or viciously for what seemed like hours, but it was only minutes or perhaps a second, because it was only a dream.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“I meditated on my childhood, vague and distant before high school, where Laura still flickered only on the edge of things.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“Look at the lonely fisherman,' my father says.

'Look at his view,' my mother says.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“I faded out. I was for a moment my father tapping on his cigarette, the way he holds it, crushing it flat. I was my mother at the sink, staring into the desert from the kitchen window, dishes in hand. I was in all the beds I'd ever slept in. Me sinking into the sheets, letting my thoughts fall down. I was running alongside the ocean, Laura splashing me with water. I was dancing to a melody I did not recognize, spinning wild and lovely into exalted leaps. I was no one again. I was someone with no name, no past. My face resumed the freshness of birth, the brightness was again in my eyes, the brightness only children own before life begins its wreckage.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“Her father kneels and unclasps the urn. Above the waves she falls graceful as snow, my sister, my Sonora.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

“He said that some nights he heard the tom-tom beat of his passion, but he didn't know for sure whether it was really the beat of his passion or of his youth slipping through his fingers, maybe, he added, it's just the beat of poetry, the beat that comes to us all without exception at some mysterious hour, easily missed but absolutely free.”
― Roberto Bolaño, Woes of the True Policeman

“There are three butterflies that dance around a flame. The first butterfly comes close to the flame and says, 'I know all about love. It is beautiful, unforgettable.' The second butterfly wants to get even closer than the first, so it does. But it singes its wings. So it withdraws. Terrified, the butterfly says, 'I know that love only burns.' But the third butterfly simply throws itself into the flames and is consumed.”
― Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora