Key+Quotes+Mango

=Mango Street Quotes=

1. "Sally, you lied, you lied. He wouldn't let me go. He said I love you, I love you, Spanish girl." This was said by Esperanza in the chapter Red Clowns. She was standing by a clown and a group of boys sexually assaulted her. She told her friend Sally that she lied. She thought Sally was going to come back soon, but instead Sally went off with another boy and left Esperanza alone.

2. "Like it or not you are Mango Street, and one day you'll come back too." - Found in Alicia & I Talking on Edna's Steps This quote was saying that Esperanza will always be connected to Mango Street and she will come back someday.

3. "Nenny, I say, but she doesn't hear me. She is too many light-years away. She is in a world we don't belong to anymore. Nenny. Going. Going." - In the Vignette, Hips. This quote means that Nenny and Esperanza are separating and aren't as connected as they used to be. 4. "In the canteen, which was nothing special, lots of boys and girls watched while I cried and ate my sandwich, the bread already greasy and the rice cold." - In A Rice Sandwich. This quote means that Esperanza is lonely. She explains that they all watched as she cried alone. She was lonely. 5. "But the house on Mango Street is not the way they told it at all." - In the Vignette, The House on Mango Street. 6. "I put it down on paper and then the ghost does not ache so much. I write it down and Mango says goodbye sometimes. She does not hold me with both arms. She sets me free." - In the Vignette, Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes. In this quote Esperanza uses metaphors to portray her leaving her previous home, the one that she hated so much. She feels some guilt, but she's finally leaving. 7. "Those who don't know any better come into our neighborhood scared. All brown all around, we are safe. But watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake." - In the Vignette, Those Who Don't. In this quote Esperanza explains that in their neighborhood, since they are darker in skin tone, the people that live in the other parts of the city feel like strangers there. However, it also works the other way. When they go into the lighter-skinned neighborhoods, they feel like outsiders.

8. "In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting." In the Vignette, Name. This quote was made by Esperanza. Here she explains what her name means. It could be literal, but in Spanish it doesn't have a meaning, so she might mean something else. When she says that it means sadness and waiting, she could just be describing herself.

9. "Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor." - In the Vignette, A Red Balloon. This quote is a metaphor. Obviously she isn't a red balloon. She means that she wants to be set free, to go to where she wants to go, but she can't because she is tied to an anchor and can't fly away because it is so heavy.

10. "She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn't be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window." In the Vignette, Name. In this quote she tells the reader about her grandmother and how she has inherited her name. She also adds on that she doesn't want to live a boring life like she has.

11. "No, this isn't my house I say and shake my head as if shaking could undo the year I've lived here. I don't belong. I don't ever want to come from here." In this quote Esperanza reveals that she hates the fact that she lived in her ugly house. She is ashamed to ever have lived there.

12. "Until one day Sally's father catches her talking to a boy and the next day she doesn't come to school. And the next. Until the way Sally tells it, he just went crazy, he just forgot he was her father between the buckle and the belt." - In the Vignette, What Sally Said. This quote shoes the cruelties someone's father shows someone because she is a girl. It doesn't specifically say what her father actually did, but he could have done many things. He could have belted her, or even killed her.