I need, therefore I imagine.
Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me.
You start by writing to live. You end by writing so as not to die.
I discovered very quickly that criticism is a form of optimism, and that when you are silent about the shortcomings of your society, you’re very pessimistic about that society. And it’s only when you speak truthfully about it that you show your faith in that society.
Love can isolate us from everything around us. But in its absence, we can be filled with the fear that something comparable exists.
The United States has written the white history of the United States. It now needs to write the black, Latino, Indian, Asian and Caribbean history of the United States.
No government functions without the grease of corruption.
The French equate intelligence with rational discourse, the Russians with intense soul-searching. For the Mexican, intelligence is inseparable from maliciousness.
One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It’s one of the oldest urges in mankind. It’s a way of stalling death.
The language of Mexicans springs from abysmal extremes of power and impotence, domination and resentment.
What’s happened at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is one of the grossest violations of human rights under the Geneva Conventions that we have record of. It is simply monstrous.
What America does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is to understand others.
Religion is dogmatic. Politic is ideological. Reason must be logical, but literature has a privilege of being equivocal.
I believe in books that do not go to a ready-made public. I’m looking for readers I would like to make. To win them, to create readers rather than to give something that readers are expecting. That would bore me to death.
By its very nature, the novel indicates that we are becoming. There is no final solution. There is no last word.
There is no creation without tradition; the ‘new’ is an inflection on a preceding form; novelty is always a variation on the past.
Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.
I live through risk. Without risk there is no art. You should always be on the edge of a cliff about to fall down and break your neck.
There must be something beyond slaughter and barbarism to support the existence of mankind and we must all help search for it.
Art gives life to what history killed. Art gives voice to what history denied, silenced, or persecuted. Art brings truth to the lies of history.