Michael Nava Quotes

[Henry, to Tony Earl] "I'll argue self-defense."
"You do that," he said, "but last time I looked at the jury instructions on self-defense, if someone comes at you with fists you don't get to blow their brains out with a semiautomatic."
"You can if his fists can kill you," I said.

[Alex] Big ideas don't pay the rent.

"Abuelita," he said, groping for words to frame his thought. "Was today history?" "History is simply the passage of time, José, so we are in history at every moment."

He had the open, cheerful, rather self-satisfied countenance of someone upon whom life had made very few demands.

We must also again emphasize that gays and lesbians do not seek the right to be homosexual. This "right" is not one within the authority of government to give. They are fighting for the right to secure the conditions under which they may lead ordinary, civilized lives.

Patricia Ryan was a tall, beautiful woman about whom many stories were told, some of them true.

[Henry, to Vicky] "I know you think homosexuality is a sin, but that's because you've been taught by ignorant people."

It was sometimes easier to read the future from the entrails of a cat than get a fix on what a judge was thinking, and Torres-Jones was particularly hard to get a handle on.

[Elena, about daughter] "Now I understand that it isn't up to her to be who I might want her to be. It's up to me to love her for who she is."

What is happening in contemporary American society is that people who prefer to be with members of their own sex no longer see this as a reason to be deprived of the rights to citizenship, family formation, and privacy.

[Henry Rios] I said a prayer, always the same prayer. Two words. Help us.

He was so arrogant that he spoke of himself in the plural.

[Miguel Sarmiento, to Alicia] "I do not wish to be disrespectful of your beliefs, but in my view religion is no more than superstition, a way to explain natural phenomena for which there are now rational and scientific explanations. Those superstitions may have served their purpose once, but their time has passed. The longer they persist, the more pernicious they become. "

Having had to work twice as hard for what he deserved on merit alone, he'd developed a kind of rage, like an extra set of muscles, propelling him through life. The rage never went away. There was never enough to reward you for what you had suffered. And you never, ever, forgot you were an outsider, no matter how expensive your suits.

[Henry] "...when you start running from yourself, you end up in some pretty dark places."