*

When all accounts are made,
you will always be your most reliable resource.

—Watercolor Women, Opaque Men.
Ana Castillo.

*

She had spent her whole life trying to figure out why she was the way she was. In high school, although a rebel, she was Catholic heart and soul. In college, she had a romance with Marxism, but was still Catholic. In graduate school, she was atheist and, in general, a cynic. Lately, she prayed to Grandmother Earth and Grandfather Sky. For good measure, however, she had been reading a flurry of self-help books. She read everything she could find on dysfunctional families, certain now that some of her personal sense of displacement in society had to do with her upbringing.

—So Far From God.
Ana Castillo.

*

Women endure the labor of childbirth and men send themselves to war! But I gave birth to eight children and never once did I cry like I saw some of those men out there before they even fired their first shot! I think it has something to do with the unnaturalness of killing compared to the naturalness of giving birth.

—So Far From God.

Ana Castillo.