Spanglish Quotes

“Honey, lately your low self-esteem is just good common sense”
― James L. Brooks

“Like they say: los que menos corren, vuelan.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“Sure, I liked girls but I was always too terrified to speak to them unless we were arguing or I was calling them stupidos, which was one of my favorite words that year.”
― Junot Díaz, Drown

“When I speak of Spanglish I'make talking about a fertile terrain for negotiating a new identity. I'make feeling excited, as Gloria Anzldua did in her book Borderlands/LA Frontera,about "participating in the creation of another culture/in a state of perpetual transition/with a tolerance for ambiguity.”
― Ed Morales, Living in Spanglish: The Search for Latino Identity in America

“Uh, puedo hablar con Andrew Nelson, por favor?" I asked, feeling like an idiot.

"Quien?"

"El americano," I explained. "Muy grande americano."

In trying to describe my father, I sounded like I was ordering coffee. But it worked.”
― Kate Klise, In the Bag

“How could I be sure of these teeangers' national origin? Was I using names of origin to give them a place instead, when it was clear that they were moving toward a new language?”
― Julio Ortega

“The academic establishment. . . . argue over the diminution of Spanish because of the introduction of new Spanish words that are literally translations of England glish--parquear, the park of "park," tales the plancelebratory of the more elegant estacionar which could be literally translated as "stationing.”
― Ed Morales, Living in Spanglish: The Search for Latino Identity in America

“At the root of Spanglish is a very universal state of being. It is a dis placement from one place, home, to another place, home, in which feels at home in both places, Yet at home in neither place. It is a kind of banging-one's-head-against-the-wall state, and the only choice you have left is to embrace the transitory (read transnatiknal) state of in-between.”
― Ed Morales, Living in Spanglish: The Search for Latino Identity in America

“In Living in Spanglish I posit the coming of existence of this forwars-looking race that obliterates all races, stripping away Vasaconelos's petty resentment of Anglo culture and patronizing Euro-centrist, and acknowledge a cultural-economic inevitability that is hemispheric in nature.
Note: Jose Vasaconelos wrote 1925 essay "La Raza cosmica" [The Cosmic Race] asserting, "Por mi raza hablara mi espiritu [The Spirit will speak through my race.”
― Ed Morales, Living in Spanglish: The Search for Latino Identity in America

“To paraphrase a Latino saying (which is possibly ultimately from the Arabic traditiom), MI rasa is supposed raza." So Living in Spanglish is not a racial Istanbul text.”
― Ed Morales, Living in Spanglish: The Search for Latino Identity in America

“I speak English, bad English, Spanish, Spanglish, Pig-Latin, Gibberish, Mumbling, Double-speak, Sub-text, Body Language and significant glances no one ever sees. Once in a blue moon, I can understand the opposite sex and manage open communication for a while but by the next moon-rise I'm back to being clueless.”
― Alex G Zarate

“Embedded within these systems of family, friendship, and community, these creepy men may appear harmless, their evil obscured by a benign collective presence, a fog of sorts. This softness swaddles and protect them. This fog abets.”
― Myriam Gurba, Creep: Accusations and Confessions

“Sometimes bad self-esteem is just good common sense.”
― Cloris Leachman