Isabel Cañas > Quotes

“But if God is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, if He is three in one in the Trinity, then God knows nothing of loneliness. God knows nothing of standing with his back to a gray morning, of dropping to his knees in the dust.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“Words can damn or bless in equal measure, and are never to be used lightly.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“When a man makes a promise, he makes it on his honor. When a witch makes a promise, they feel it in their bones.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“Colonialism carved the landscapes of our homes with ghosts, It left gaping wounds that still weep”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“Our relationship was founded on one thing, and one thing only. My world was a dark, windowless room, and he was a door.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“my world was a dark, windowless room, and he was a door.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“His voice was like coming home. It loosened the unease that had curled in her chest all week.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“Industry will rise and fall, men will scorch the earth and slaughter one another for emperors or republics, but they will always want drink.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“It all made her want to shed her skin like the witch in Abuela’s story, let everything that made her a woman fall to the ground to be salted and ruined as she flew into the night, her bones bare and cold in the starlight.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“Bitterly though I admitted it, in one respect, Vicente was perfectly right about me: I had no gift for civilizing, not as criollos like him defined it. Nor had I ever wished for it.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“He was a man of dust who served men of silver: it was impossible not to know his place in the world.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“I savored the memory of her voice. The way her whisper held a profane, exquisite power over me, how its brush could send an aching trill down my spine.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“Juana had always been headstrong, almost churlish, but there was a wildness to her now, one that spoke of something shattered within her.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“Nena waited. After nine years apart, she still knew the rhythm of his speaking. She knew he had more to say, that he was searching for words or untangling a difficult thought. He was one of the few men she knew who spent time with his thoughts before speaking, even in the midst of an argument or excitement. It was one of the reasons she loved him.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“Family is all we have when things fall apart,”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“It is said that mortal life is empty without the love of God. That the ache of loneliness's wounds is assuaged by obedience to Him, for in serving God we encounter perfect love and are made whole. But if God is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, if He is three in one in the Trinity, then God knows nothing of loneliness...God knows nothing of loneliness, because God has never tasted companionship as mortals do: clinging to one another in darkness so complete and sharp it scrapes flesh from bone, trusting one another even as the Devil's breath blooms hot on their napes.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“Fate had been unkind to me, but sometimes, its pettiness worked in my favor.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“I was a sinner. I was a witch. I had sinned and would sin again, like all men. But whatever my decisions meant for life after death was between me and the Lord. All I could do was serve the home and people I loved using every gift I was born with.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“She became more and more tightly bound by the ropes of womanhood; he roamed free, unburdened by responsibilities.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“If other men were charcoal sketches, he was drawn in fine ink.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“And at twenty, I faced a ticking clock: marry soon, when I was seen as fresh and virginal and desirable, or marry not at all.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“He pressed his lips to hers. When he pulled away, her eyes were open, her gaze liquid and intense. A new understanding cracked open in his chest: they both knew that was not practice.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“Even when she walked into the most sickened of houses to purify their energy with copal and smudging of burnt herbs on the walls and hearths, houses so diseased she ordered me to stand outside with the inhabitants, the voices rippled off her like water off silver, her aura as impenetrable as a warrior's gleaming shield. She was a prophet in a land that had been stripped of its gods: a healer of the sick, a beacon in the night. She reached into steel-dark clouds to control the storms of the rainy season, seizing lightning as her reins and bending them to her will to turn harvests into gold. She called the voices to heel and banished them. I was not her.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“He was rich with magic she couldn't understand, a key to a part of herself that had been dead for a long, long time. To her, he was worth more than he knew.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“Should is an oddly powerful word. Shame and anger have a way of flying to it like coins to a lodestone.”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“Losing you,” she said, her dark eyes searching his face. “To you, Nena died. To her, you left. Those are two very different griefs.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“My eyes filled with tears. How scornful I had been of Mamá insisting I should marry for love. How convinced I was that I was right to be practical, to sacrifice a loving partnership like she and Papá had for an estate in the country and financial security”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“She was there. She was with him, as real as she had been in life. He wanted to see her. He wanted to see her face more than he wanted water on a hot afternoon, more than he wanted rest after weeks in the saddle.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

“stay out of the sun or you'll never get a husband”
― Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda

“Like Néstor, he had found his way in the world alone. He did not know why Néstor had left Los Ojuelos, but he understood something about ghosts.”
― Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte