Victor Villaseñor - People Quotes

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A whole bunch of people towards the back of the room were now getting up to leave. But these teachers were not going to intimidate me. I wasn't my father's and mother's son for nada-nothing. I wasn't my two indigenous grandmothers' grandson for nada-nothing either. I came from a long line of people…who'd lived through starvation, revolutions, and massacre. AND YOU! I yelled into the microphone. Over there in the back…who are getting up to leave…I'M GLAD THAT YOU'RE LEAVING!

Victor Villaseñor
In the last three months I hadn't lost one single game of chess. It was crazyloco, but sometimes I thought that I was so brilliant because I could see what other people couldn't see or understand even after I'd explain it to them. Playing chess wasn't about making single moves. It was about seeing patterns, then backing up inside your mind and seeing the last five and six moves of your opponent, then flashing forward real fast. And bingo, the whole chessboard became alive in living patterns.

Victor Villaseñor
DO YOU HEAR ME? I now screamed to the heavens, driving this information into the deepest crevices of my mind. I, VICTOR EDMUNDO VILLASEÑOR, TAKE THIS HOLY OATH BEFORE YOU, GOD ALMIGHTY, as your son, to write my people's story WITH ALL MY HEART AND SOUL! I'll write! I'll do my part with all the power and intensity that I put into wrestling, hunting, trying to castrate myself, and chess!

Victor Villaseñor
Oh, I loved Mr. Moffet! He was WONDERFUL! He'd given me hope! I felt fearless once again, and I could clearly see it had always been fear that had kept me dammed up all these years. Fear of sin, fear of hell, fear of what people might think of me, fear of … of … I didn't quite know how to say or even think all these thoughts I was having, and yet… it was like I was now so excited with all these thoughts racing around inside my brain that I was on fire. Maybe I wasn't really stupid after all. Maybe I'd just been misled all these years from the very beginning. OH, A FIRE FOR WANTING TO LEARN ALL I COULD LEARN WAS NOW BURNING INSIDE ME!

Victor Villaseñor
The Indians, were like the weeds. That roses you had to water and give 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, reaching for the sunlight of God. That's the power of our people, my father would tell me, we're the weeds, LAS YERBAS DE TODO EL MUNDO!

Victor Villaseñor
My God, it was really coming true. The higher and higher I climbed in education, the more I was finding people I could talk to.

Victor Villaseñor
I began to realize that my parents were going to build the biggest damn house in the whole town! I was shocked! Are we rich? I asked my brother. Yes, he said. We are? Then why do I always wear dirty, old work clothes? I asked. Because we're ranchers, said my brother. We're not city people. Oh, I said, then it's okay for us to be dirty? We aren't dirty, he said, laughing. To be dirty means you never wash. We wash our clothes and take baths all the time. It's just that people that live on a ranch get dirt on themselves. My eyes went big. I'd never thought of this. My brother was really smart.

Victor Villaseñor
So, keep your powder dry and dig in for a long, fruitful life of being a writer, that storyteller around the campfire of your people and your generation. Your trade is as old as time, and your main job is to uplift the human heart so that then we can go on with dignity and fair play. That's it

Victor Villaseñor
I still wanted to tell our teacher about how the Indian people who'd worked on the ranch for us had explained to me that Shep, who'd always loved my brother more than life itself, had disappeared, because he'd run off to the highest hilltop to intercept my brother's soul so he could lead my brother's soul back to heaven.

Victor Villaseñor