Victor Villasenor Quotes & Sayings

teachers are no accident! You study to become a teacher! You work at it for years. So I cannot, and will not forgive teachers who are abusive, mean, and torture kids with commas and periods and misspelling, making them feel like they are less than human because they don't or can't seem to get it right. — Victor Villasenor

Inside, the midwife was trying to get Socorro to open her mouth wide and let the pain come out. "Open your mouth," said Angelina, massaging Socorro's neck and shoulders, "and let out what you feel. Don't keep it in, querida, let it out."
Socorro cried softly at first, but little by little she loosened up and she began to let out long, ear-piercing screams.
"Good," said the midwife, "now breathe deeply, deeply, and then cry out again, letting all the pain go out of your body. — Victor Villasenor

Oh, if only I could hurt with such misery once again, to feel the powers of love here inside my heart, the joys of heaven and the pains of hell! — Victor Villasenor

Rich is the cream of the fat cow's milk," she said. "Rich is the love of God that we receive each new day! Rich isn't gold! Gold is only for people that are poor of heart! — Victor Villasenor

Mi hijito, I've told you a thousand times, if you speak badly of people, God will punish you and make you just like them. — Victor Villasenor

Women have to be careful to not wear out their husbands on their honeymoons, or they get so weak that they can't go to work! — Victor Villasenor

Jaguars, afterall, were fairly common, and so people were more respectful than afraid of them, just as they were of any other natural force. — Victor Villasenor

The beginning of all wisdom is to understand that you don't know. To know is the enemy of all learning. To be sure is the enemy of wisdom. — Victor Villasenor

And in that moment of sun and joy, Lupe knew why she loved and also hated Salvador. He gave her wings. He didn't try to lock her in, as had Jaime and the other boys she'd known. No, she could dream her wildest dreams with him and so she loved him for this; but she also hated him because it made her fearful. No one in her family was like this. They were always very cautious. — Victor Villasenor

Because Spanish is a feeling-based language that comes first from the heart, just as English is a thinking-based language that comes first from the head. — Victor Villasenor

Could it be we stifle our children's genius by languaging them too quickly away from their hearts and into the straight and narrow confines of linear thinking? — Victor Villasenor

And I thanked mi papa who'd always said to me that we, los Indios, the Indians, were like the weeds. That roses you had to water and giver fertilizer or they'd die. But weeds, indigenous plants, you gave them nada-nothing; hell you even poisoned them and put concrete over them, and those weeds would still break the concrete, — Victor Villasenor

For this is God's great plan, that people rise up beyond their personal hatreds, here, right now, in this new land where so many different people with so many different bloods have come to join together and that we recognize we are all the children of God! Every one of us! — Victor Villasenor

Because, you see, a bad teacher, like Moses, the abusive English teacher that I had in Carlsbad, kills kids, here in the heart, and not just with their tests, but with their superior attitude and those sly smiles that they like to give to their A students, but never to the ones who are also working hard, or maybe even harder, like me, but just couldn't get it! — Victor Villasenor

And so, there in the penitentiary, Juan's education began. He didn't want to be a puto weakling, so he worked hard at learning to read. His earthly body was locked up, but his mind was set free as a young eagle soaring through the heavens. — Victor Villasenor

I don't care about periods or commas or misspellings at this time, even though this is English class. What I want to do is to get you so excited about reading and writing that the love of learning will be with you for the rest of your lives. I don't want to hinder your natural joy of wanting to venture into a world of books and writing and wanting to learn. — Victor Villasenor

That's all we need, another drunk author. — Victor Villasenor

No, you are not to complain or question who you are, but instead, grow, reaching for the light that's inside you. — Victor Villasenor

You are the machos, the life, the future of our families. You are all that's left, so you must protect our mothers and grow and do good and have families of your own. I love you. I do. I do. — Victor Villasenor

I know realized that this was how you enslaved a people. You didn't just bring them over in chains from Africa. No, you convinced them that they were inferior, not evolved, subhuman, and then you took off their shackles, so they could go to work, you'd still have them enslaved and shackled inside of their minds for hundreds of years. And this system of teaching was fine with most Anglo teachers, because int he act of convincing us, los Mexicanos and the Blacks, we were subhuman, they'd also convinced themselves that they were superior! — Victor Villasenor

And also
to add to my problems
my parents and relatives kept telling me how they'd grown up feeling so close to the Almighty that they'd spoken to Him on a daily basis as one would speak to a friend and how, now and then, God had actually spoken back to them in the form of miracles. — Victor Villasenor

Talking to God was damned good business. — Victor Villasenor

we don't have five senses as we were told by all that flat, world-thinking that came from Europe. The Mother Earth is Round, we were told, and the Universe is Alive and Whole and always Growing and Changing in Sacred Cycles. Men have six senses, and women have seven, and when a man and woman come together, they then have all Thirteen. This is what love is really all about, a man and a woman coming to their full senses when they Unite their Love with the Holy Creator. — Victor Villasenor