Nicholas Cato

“In my experience, whatever happens clings to us like barnacles on the hull of a ship, slowing us slightly, both uglifying and giving us texture. You can scrape all you want, you can, if you have money, hire someone else to scrape, but the barnacles will come back or at least leave a blemish on the steel.”
― Nick Flynn, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

“When you get to the United States, nobody will understand you. I don't mean just the language. It's a country of strangers. It will be another kind of sentence. But one that as an immigrant you won't be able to escape.

You think this country is so much better?

No, but it's a land of brothers and sisters. You want to go to a place where you'll be invisible.

I want to be with my mother.

Colombia is your mother too.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“Emigration was a peeling away of the skin. An undoing. You wake each morning and forget where you are, who you are, and when the world outside shows you your reflection, it's ugly and distorted; you've become a scorned, unwanted creature.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“What you fear your whole life comes to pass. You end up living toward it, you spend your life running from it but your foot is nailed to the sidewalk. You circle around it until you wear yourself own.”
― Nick Flynn, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City