Daniel Alarcon Quotes

The city was lovely. There could be no place in the world to which he belonged so completely.
That was why he'd always dreamed of leaving, and why he'd always been so afraid to go.

For fiction, I'm not particularly nationalistic. I'm not like the Hugo Chavez of Latin American letters, you know? I want people to read good work.

He imagined her impressed by his maturity, by his willingness to share her with another man. But this formulation was partial. It did not take into account the fact that she'd loved him, or that he'd broken her heart. It did not consider that her heart might be broken still, or that every time they slept together, it broke a little more.

A man should cause an impression," she said. "He should leave you with something to think about. Without that, there's no magic.

Radio is the medium that most closely approximates the experience of reading. As a novelist, I find it very exciting to be able to reach people who might not ever pick up one of my books, either because they can't afford it (as is often the case in Latin America), or because they just don't have the habit of reading novels.

I like radio because you can do an hour-long interview and then three days later have a finished piece.

The impact of any particular writer on your own work is hard to discern.

There are stories that are by and for Latin Americans, where a certain amount of cultural fluency is expected, where we can delight in the details, the humor, the particularities of speech, of dialects. Something is always lost in translation; we know instinctively that this is the case. A Radio Ambulante story looks at Latin America from the inside.

Radio, or at least the kind of radio we're proposing to do, can cut through that. It can reach people who would otherwise never hear your work, and of course I find that very notion inspiring. Radio stories are powerful because the human voice is powerful. It has been and will continue to be the most basic element of storytelling. As a novelist (and I should note that working my novel is the first thing I do in the morning and the very last thing I do before I sleep), shifting into this new medium is entirely logical. It's still narrative, only with different tools.

Writing a novel is not at all like riding a bike. Writing a novel is like having to redesign a bike, based on laws of physics that you don't understand, in a new universe. So having written one novel does nothing for you when you have to write the second one.

Publication in 'The New Yorker' meant everything, and it's no exaggeration to say that it changed my life.

I'm a believer in the benefits of translation. It's a necessity and a privilege - it would be awful to be limited to reading authors who's work was composed in the languages I happen to have learned.

And what does he feel?"
"He feels uneasy. A little afaid. Angry. Oddly, a hint of pride."
"Good," Henry said. "ANd where are you?"
"Backstage."
Henry shook his head gravely. "THere's no such thing as backstage. The play begins, and there's only the world it dramatizes. Now, where are you?"
"With my father, the president. In his chambers."
"Right. With me. Your father. And now
this is important
do you love me?"
Nelson considered this; or rather, Nelson, as Alejo, considered this.
"Yes," he said after a moment. "I do."
"Good. Remember that. In every scene
even when you hate me, you also love me. That's why it hurts. Got it?"
Nelson said that he did.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Good. Because it does hurt," Henry said. "DOn't forget that. It's supposed to. Always.

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The phone collapsed distances, just as the radio did, and, like the radio, it relied on the miracle of imagination: one had to concentrate deeply, plunge headlong into it.

What I'm most interested in is not necessarily the wound, but the scar. Not how someone is wounded, but what the scar does later.

Ask any human being alive if they're the same person they were seven years ago and they're going to tell you they aren't.

Heartbreak is like shattered glass: while it's impossible that two pieces could splinter in precisely the same pattern, in he end, it doesn't matter, because the effect is identical.

At the most basic level, I appreciate writers who have something to say.

A novel is like an animal you have to hunt down and kill. If you let it sit for two days, it's got a two-day head start. So, if I just look at it every day, I'm so much better off.

They spoke of the crowds that had filled the plaza: the people, always myopic, always easy to fool.

I write in English because I was raised in the States and educated in this language.

The bond between parent and child is chemical, fierce, and inexplicable, even if that parent is a sworn killer. This connection cannot be measured; it at once more subtle and more powerful than science.

You don't sound like a scientist, you sound like a poet."
Rey smiled, "Can I be both?"
But you'd rather be a poet."
Who wouldn't?" he said.

Peru is a country where more than half the people would emigrate if given the chance. That's half the population that is willing to abandon everything they know for the uncertainty of a life in a foreign land, in another language.

Nothing builds community like complaining.

I think probably the thing I'm worst at is the most ephemeral stuff, like blogs. I find it really hard to write. And I'm often been asked to write columns for papers in Peru. And I can't. I would die. There's no way I could write a column.

I guess in my own life I don't really think much about manliness too much. I feel like a lot of men that I know don't sit around thinking, "How am I supposed to be a man?" I don't think that I have to prove anything.

When I was younger, I was able to write with music playing in the background, but these days, I can't. I find it distracting. Even when the music is just instrumental or has lyrics in a language I don't understand, the clash between the voices in my head and the song can be very disorienting.

What does a car bomb say about poverty, or the execution of a rural mayor explain about disenfranchisement? ...
The war had become, it it wasn't from the beginning, an indecipherable text.

It's true that there are people who live the idea of being an artist, as opposed to the idea of making art.

There was a problem: No one cared about human rights anymore, not at home or abroad. They cared about growth
hoped for and celebrated in all the newspapers, invoked by zealous bureaucrats in every self-serving television interview. On this matter, the filmmaker was agnostic
he came from money, and couldn't see the urgency. Like many of his ilk, he sometimes confused poverty (which must be eradicated!) with folklore (which must be preserved!), but it was a genuine confusion, without a hint of ill intention, which only made it more infuriating.

Writing an op-ed feels like I'm taking the SAT. It's so hard. It feels like homework. And if it feels like homework, it just doesn't get done.