“I mean, shit, what Latino family doesn't think it's cursed?”

“I used to think those were the barrio rules, Latinos and blacks in, whites out —a place we down cats weren’t supposed to go. But love teaches you. Clears your head of any rules.”

“If you ask me I don't think there are any such things as curses. I think there is only life. That's enough.”

“They say it came from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles. Fukú americanus, or more colloquially, fukú - generally a curse or doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and the Doom of the New World. No matter what its name or provenance, it is believed that the arrival of Europeans on Hispaniola unleashed fukú on the world, and we've all been in the shit ever since.”

“That’s life for you. All the happiness you gather to yourself, it will sweep away like it’s nothing. If you ask me I don’t think there are any such things as curses. I think there is only life. That’s enough.”

“Nobody likes children, your mother assured you. That doesn't mean you don't have them.”

“And that's when I know it's over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it's the end.”