Richard Rodriguez, Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father(New York: Penguin, 1993):
"I take it as an Indian achievement that I am alive, that I am Catholic, that I speak English, that I am an American. My life began, it did not end, in the sixteenth century." Id. at 24.
"I have never looked for utopia on a map. Of course I believe in human advancement. I believe in medicine, in astrophysics, in washing machines. But my compass takes its cardinal point from tragedy. If I respond to the metaphor of spring, I nevertheless learned, years ago, from my Mexican father, from my Irish nuns, to count on winter. The point of Eden for me, for us, is not approach but expulsion." Id. at 29.
"Taste, which is, after all, the insecurity of the middle class." Id. at 33.
"The poor can live on far less than justice.. But the poor have a half-life to outlast radium." Id. at 95.
"Do you think your story is a sad story?
No, she replies. It is a true story.
What is the difference?
(Slowly, then.)
When you hear a sad story you cry, she says. When you hear a true story you cry even more." Id. at 162.
