Incredible the animal that first dreamed of another animal.
I use a lot of film images, analogies, and imagination.
The possibility of being as free with the camera as we are with the pen is a fantastic prospect for the creative life of the 21st century.
The Mexicans descend from the Aztecs; the Peruvians descend from the Incas; the Argentineans descend from the boats.
Death is the great Maecenas, Death is the great angel of writing. You must write because you are not going to live any more.
Contrary to the macho culture of Mexico, both my grandmothers were very brave young widows. I was always very close to these hard-working, intelligent women.
I like fighting. I get into rows all the time.
Some writers achieve great popularity and then disappear forever. The bestseller lists of the past fifty years are, with a few lively exceptions, a sombre graveyard of dead books.
I started my own magazine with drawings, commentary, news, film reviews and drawings.
There are people whose external reality is generous because it is transparent, because you can read everything, accept everything, understand everything about them: people who carry their own sun with them.
I’ve lost audiences, I’ve recovered them.
If the Soviet Union can give up the Brezhnev Doctrine for the Sinatra Doctrine, the United States can give up the James Monroe Doctrine for the Marilyn Monroe Doctrine: Let’s all go to bed wearing the perfume we like best.
In Latin America, even atheists are Catholics.
The citizen takes his city for granted far too often. He forgets to marvel.
The United States condoned dictatorships in Latin America for much of the 20th century.
My system for staying young is to work a lot, to always have a project on the go.
At 50 I find there is a long line of characters and shapes demanding words just outside my window.
Diplomacy in a sense is the opposite of writing. You have to disperse yourself so much: the lady who comes in crying because shes had a fight with the secretary; exports and imports; students in trouble; thumbtacks for the embassy.
I have two children who died before reaching 30, so who am I to complain about being alive?
I must write the book out in my head now, before I sit down.