Justin Torres Quotes

• Shame doesn't exist in the animal kingdom. It's a human conception.

  Justin Torres

  Animal, Kingdoms, Shame

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  9 Copy quote

• What we gotta do is, we gotta figure out a way to reverse gravity, so that we all fall upward, through the clouds and sky, all the way to Heaven.

  Justin Torres

  Fall, Clouds, Sky

  Justin Torres (2012). “We the Animals”, p.71, Granta Books

  7 Copy quote

• Animals don't think in terms of victims and villains, or good and bad, or evil, or shame.

  Justin Torres

  Animal, Thinking, Evil

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  10 Copy quote

• I don't think that any family has a function. I just think that a family is. It just exists.

  Justin Torres

  Thinking, Function

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  8 Copy quote

• Everybody’s got rights. A man tied to a bed got rights. A man down in a dungeon got rights. A little screaming baby got rights. Yeah, you got rights. What you don’t got is power.

  Justin Torres

  Baby, Men, Rights

  Justin Torres (2012). “We the Animals”, p.96, Granta Books

  6 Copy quote

• Sometimes I would be very upset because my memories are very murky from my childhood, but there are certain emotional memories or emotional truths that are painful, and things that I know to be the case and I had to nail them down, and that was difficult.

  Justin Torres

  Memories, Emotional, Childhood

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  6 Copy quote

• This is your heritage,' he said, as if from this dance we could know about his own childhood, about the flavor and grit of tenement buildings in Spanish Harlem, and projects in Red Hook, and dance halls, and city parks, and about how his own Paps, how he had beat him, how he taught him to dance, as if we could hear Spanish in his movements, as if Puerto Rico was a man in a bathrobe, grabbing another beer from the fridge and raising it to drink, his head back, still dancing, still steeping and snapping perfectly in time.

  Justin Torres

  Beer, Men, Cities

  9 Copy quote

• As you become an adult, shame gets introduced and reintroduced constantly to you. So where something that, to a child, just is what it is - you know, your father's violent but he loves you and that's just the way it is - later on you realize that this is like different, shameful, blah blah blah.

  Justin Torres

  Children, Father, Love You

  "Justin Torres’ Hard-Knock Debut Novel". Interview with Tim Mcdonnell, www.motherjones.com. October 3, 2011.

  6 Copy quote

• I totally bristle against words like "dysfunction" or "abuse."

  Justin Torres

  Dysfunction, Abuse

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  6 Copy quote

• We hit and we kept on hitting; we were allowed to be what we were, frightened and vengeful — little animals, clawing at what we needed.

  Justin Torres

  Animal, Hitting, Littles

  Justin Torres (2012). “We the Animals”, p.45, Granta Books

  4 Copy quote

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