Julia Alvarez

“I’m more in the Faulkner tradition. I’m writing my Spanish in English. Florid, flowing, expansive, rococo sounds, the sonority of Spanish closer to the Latin roots than the English, which has been also infused with Anglo Saxon, Germanic words. Really, it’s part of my English. It’s how I write English.”

“I was looking for books and stories and novels that addressed our history in the Americas. And there weren’t that many for young readers. I saw that they had a lot of books about the Holocaust and about slavery, but not that much about kids growing up in a dictatorship up and down the Americas, which was the phenomenon of the last century in many of our countries. Many Latinos in the Dominican Republic had grandparents or parents who had fled from dictatorships. I wanted our own Anne Frank story. And that was really the story I set in the Dominican Republic in the Trujillo dictatorship.”

“Even though they’re that unit of four sisters, they’re also individuals. One will find her way of integrating that transition or failing at it, but I think that throughout, the telling of stories – the mother tells stories, the father tells stories and the daughters tell stories to each other – becomes the string in the labyrinth for them. Storytelling. Stories create meaning and structure out of the chaos. They are a blueprint for experience. I think that is part of how they’re all helped, some more successfully than others.”

“I tried to listen, take notes ......and stared outon the New England meadow straight from Frost:acres of grasses and flowers tossed bya wind which whirled with the continualroar of a thousand voices from Babel.”

“I was driving down the mountain, the curveswere bad, I wasn't going slow, the daywas one of those that takes your breath away...On hilltops, I made believe I'd take offinto the absolute, but as I swervedagain and again...and as the sun'sautumnal, soporific light shone on...something gave in me and I let go—this driving need to make it all mean more.In time, I turned the wheel back to the road.”

“I say, Don't trust those men with better,bigger versions of love if they refusethe small, shabby sample they gave othersthe tribute of believing it was true.”

“I'm watching a romantic playin Plato's cave; half the time I don'tbelieve in it...Other times I'm so addicted I'm one of the mainliners...hallucinating that in truth a man'sbody is one of the Absolute Forms.I look around when the houselights come onand see no one!”

“It's UPSwith two parcels! ...a handsome lad, guesses it's my birthdayand asks how old I am. He acts surprisedhe's a decade younger. We linger at the doorone of us is not immortal anymore.”

“Are we all with acute loneliness,chronic patients trying to recoverthe will to love?...Sometimes the loveof another wounded one acts like a salvewhich soothes the dying self but cannot healour lives. And perhaps this is what it feelslike to be human, and we are all well?”

“33 is the year that Jesus Christembraced His life......Wasn't he crucified at 33,I ask, depressed, deserted by his friends,divorced from god, subject to human laws?Wasn't he the most single finallyat 33, meeting his lonely end?Yes...”

“My gay friends ask, Well are you gay or what?”

“My friend Carol says aging evens outthe advantage of beautiful womenover plain ones. ...Where are the girls who were beautiful?”

“But my house, though protectedwith charms, can't block the spell mortalityhas cast... I turn thirty-three.”

“...the furious whir of the Singer.”

“threading her needles, winding her threads;the spools sat in their rods in the sewing box,ends tucked in the notch on the flat tops,a palette of greens, laurel, mint, olive, aquamarine,shorts, skirts, blouses, dresses, and nightgowns—better than storebought.”

“I remember the whirr and whine of her black Singer,the gold traceries on the cast iron rodby the wheel that lifted and lowered the needle.Threading, eyepieces, winding the turquoise stringthrough hooks, around miniscule wheels, up and down,her {{w|Ariadne}} hands clever in labyrinths, ...the needle racing through gingham, poplin, seersucker, cambric,the pedal pressed heavily down with the weight of one woman,eye intent, hands feeding and receiving the fabric.”

“The uncles ate seconds and rose in a chorus...empty plates glowed like the eyes of the spellbound.”

“...the aunts stopped in in the middle of swallows,heads cocked... as if they had heard...their own baby crying.It needed a pinch more of saffron? Paprika?”

“The tarragon dotted the rice in the cauldron.And now, as if signaled, the spice jars popped open,unladened their far east wonders:cumin, turmeric, saffron, and endives.The aunts each put in a shake of their favorites.The steam unwrinkled their frowns from their faces.”

“I dreamed of stretching my pastry dough outto cover the earth with a crust so finemy love would think it was nothingbut the world at his feet,baked by the summer sun,dusted with cinnamon.”