Don’t classify me, read me. I’m a writer, not a genre.
Yo no soy mexicano. Yo no soy gringo. Yo no soy chicano. No soy gringo en USA y mexicano en Mexico. Soy chicano en todas partes. No tengo que asimilarme a nada. Tengo mi propia historia.
The logic of the symbol does not express the experiment; it is the experiment. Language is the phenomenon, and the observation of the phenomenon changes its nature.
Sentado en la cama, tratas de distinguir el origen de esa luz difusa, opalina, que apens te permite separa los objetos, la presencia de Aura, de la atmosfera dorada que los envuelve.
Nor is the limitation of what is sayable a limit to the doable: this last is the possibility of literature.
Writing is a struggle against silence.
I need, therefore I imagine.
Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror.
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.