Marlene Wessel

“And maybe there is no nation or citizenry; they're just territories mapped in place of family, in place of love, the infinite country.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“What was it about the country that kept everyone hostage to its fantasy? The previous month, on its own soil, an American man went to his job at a plant and gunned down fourteen coworkers, and last spring alone there were four different school shootings. A nation at war with itself, yet people still spoke of it as some kind of paradise.”
― 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

“But what did it matter what she deserved, faced with the hilarity of one more person telling her glibly that better was out there when she was begging for mediocrity and couldn’t have that?”
― Danielle Evans, The Office of Historical Corrections