isabel.c

“Per aspera ad astra. I’d heard a variety of translations, but the one I liked best was Through the thorns, to the stars.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Were you in love with him?'
'Yes,' I say, simply. James and I put each other through the kind of reckless passions Gwendolyn once talked about, joy and anger and desire and despair. After all that, was it really so strange? I am no longer baffled or amazed or embarrassed by it. 'Yes, I was.' It's not the whole truth. The whole truth is, I'm in love with him still.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“I felt the way I often felt in this country - simultaneously conspicuous and invisible, like an oddity whom everyone noticed but chose to ignore”
― Cristina Henriquez, The Book of Unknown Americans