Carlos Fuentes Quotes

Nor is the limitation of what is sayable a limit to the doable: this last is the possibility of literature. ~ Carlos Fuentes

The language of Mexicans springs from abysmal extremes of power and impotence, domination and resentment. ~ Carlos Fuentes

I'm a writer, not a genre. ~ Carlos Fuentes

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. ~ Carlos Fuentes

And just so you know for the future, I like my double-chocolate chip cookies warm and soft in the middle ... and without magnets glued to them."
"Me, too. When you decide to bake me some, let me know. ~ Simone Elkeles

Since I neither want not can influence the events of the world, my mission is to preserve the internal integrity and equilibrium of my mind; that will be in which the manor in which I recover the purity of the original act; I shall be my own citadel, and to it I shall retire to protect myself against a hostile and corrupt world. I shall be my own citadel and, within it, my own and only citizen. ~ Carlos Fuentes

You, yesterday, did the usual things, just as any day, You don't know if it's worth remembering. You would prefer to remember, there lying in the half-darkness of the bedroom, not what has happened already but what is going to happen. In your half-darkness your eyes would prefer to look ahead, not behind, and they do not know how to foresee the past. ~ Carlos Fuentes

No government functions without the grease of corruption. ~ Carlos Fuentes

In literature, you know only what you imagine ~ Carlos Fuentes

You will seek a way to have thoughts, feeling that if you think you will have to remember. There will be things you do want to remember and others you would like, or that you will need, to forget. ~ Carlos Fuentes

He laughs. "Put some clothes on so you don't scare poor Kiara with your morning hard-on."
I look down at my shorts. Sure enough, I've got la tengo dura in front of Kiara and Tuck. Shit. I reach out for the first thing I can grab and put it in front of me to shield myself from view. It happens to be one of Kiara's stuffed animals, but I don't have much choice right now.
"That's Kiara's Mojo," Tuck says, laughing. "Get it? Mojo? ~ Simone Elkeles

Culture consists of connections, not of separations: to specialize is to isolate. ~ Carlos Fuentes

Memory is satisfied desire. ~ Carlos Fuentes

I like fighting. I get into rows all the time. ~ Carlos Fuentes

Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me. ~ Carlos Fuentes

The United States condoned dictatorships in Latin America for much of the 20th century. ~ Carlos Fuentes

The citizen takes his city for granted far too often. He forgets to marvel. ~ Carlos Fuentes

All truth is double, and perhaps multiple; absolute reason is as dangerous as absolute faith; reason also has its madness ~ Carlos Fuentes

Dios mio, I think my brother lost his balls somewhere between here and Mexico. Or maybe Brittany has them zipped inside that fancy purse (of hers). ~ Simone Elkeles

The contract between the author and the reader is a game. And the game ... is one of the greatest invetions of Western civilization: the game of telling stories, inventing characters, and creating the imaginary paradise of the individual, from whence no one can be expelled because, in a novel, no one owns the truth and everyone has the right to be heard and understood. ~ Carlos Fuentes

K,
the lady at the store said yellow means friendship and red means love. The rosary is the only thing I own that has value to me. It's yours. I'm yours
C. ~ Simone Elkeles

Religion is dogmatic. Politic is ideological. Reason must be logical, but literature has a privilege of being equivocal. ~ Carlos Fuentes

Retrospectively, I would agree with Luis Bunuel that sex without sin is like an egg without salt. ~ Carlos Fuentes

One puts off the biography like you put off death. To write an autobiography is to etch the words on your own gravestone. ~ Carlos Fuentes

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. ~ Carlos Fuentes

The United States is very good at understanding itself, and very bad at understanding others. ~ Carlos Fuentes

At a very young age, I was influenced enormously by Julio Cortazar or Carlos Fuentes. In that literature, there's always an exploration of different perspectives, points of view. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

[The Mexican revolution] was a break with the past to recover the past. We were trying to deny we had an Indian and a black and a Spanish past. The Mexican Revolution accepted all heritages. It allowed Mexico to be mestizo. ~ Carlos Fuentes

Don't classify me, read me. ~ Carlos Fuentes

In a world torn by every kind of fundamentalism - religious, ethnic, nationalist and tribal - we must grant first place to economic fundamentalism, with its religious conviction that the market, left to its own devices, is capable of resolving all our problems. This faith has its own ayatollahs. Its church is neo-liberalism; its creed is profit; its prayers are for monopolies. ~ Carlos Fuentes

U.S. foreign policy is Manichaean. It's like a Hollywood movie. You have to know who has the white hat and who has the black hat and then go against the black hat. ~ Carlos Fuentes

What is the strongest pretext for loving? ... If it is necessary, our atomized consciousness invents love, imagines it or feigns it, but does not live without it, since in the midst of infinite dispersion, love, even if as a pretext , gives us the measure of our loss. ~ Carlos Fuentes

Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers. ~ Carlos Fuentes

Carlos, your mysophobia does affect my health. I feel freer – more alive, more vivacious and, ironically enough, healthier – if I'm not constantly made to worry about germs and unhealthy choices. Whether it's for a moment of spontaneous kissing in a phone booth or eating an occasional hamburger…Obsessing about your health doesn't actually make you healthier. The fact of the matter is, Carlos, our bodies are decaying at every moment, regardless of what we do. Living is bad for your health."

"It doesn't have to be."

"Maybe if you live in an antiseptic bubble specially designed by the CDC it doesn't. But in a place like New York City, you're fighting a pointless battle. You can either embrace the dirt and the germs as part of the risky joy of living in an exciting, overpopulated metropolis, or you can spend lots of mental real estate obsessing over whether you touched a few extra microbes when you got on the subway. ~ Zack Love

Did we come here to laugh or cry ? Are we dying or being born ? ~ Carlos Fuentes

Just so you know, I'm goin' to enlist."
"I'm proud of you. But why?"
I groan against the pain but manage to give him a half smile. "I want to make sure Kiara's got a boyfriend who has more to offer than a hot bod and a face that could make angels weep. ~ Simone Elkeles

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. ~ Carlos Fuentes

I, _______________________, certify that by signing below I agree to abide by the rules outlined in the REACH Handbook. I understand the rules, which have been properly explained to me by a REACH staff member. I further acknowledge that if I disregard the rules for any reason I will be subject to disciplinary action which may include in-house detention, additional counseling, and/or expulsion from the REACH program.
What it really means: I, __________________, sign my freedom over to REACH staff. By signing this piece of paper, I certify that my life will be dictated by other people and I'll live a miserable existence while I'm in Colorado. ~ Simone Elkeles

Children know how to be cruel, and the cruelty of their elders is the surest residue of the malaise the young feel toward things strange, things other, things that reveal our own ignorance or insufficiency ~ Carlos Fuentes

You're not the only one in this relationship who loves a
challenge," he says. "And just so you know for the future, I like my double-chocolate chip
cookies warm and soft in the middle ... and without magnets glued to them. ~ Simone Elkeles

I'm in deep shit Alex, 'cause I think I'd like nothin' better than to wake up with her every mornin'. ~ Simone Elkeles

By its very nature, the novel indicates that we are becoming. There is no final solution. There is no last word. ~ Carlos Fuentes

He himself felt defeated because he was fighting against something he did not hate, because he did not understand the fratricidal hatred between the sons of Araby and Israel, and because he loved and knew and appreciated and wanted to save the merits of their cultures, although not the cruelty of their powers; he knew and loved the fountains and the gardens and the patios and high towers of al-Andalus, the nature that has been made more beautiful by man for man's pleasure, not for his mortification. ~ Carlos Fuentes

I always felt a little worm inside me: 'Now you need to write a novel with a woman protagonist.' ~ Carlos Fuentes

Normality; show me normality, señor caballero, and I will show you an exception to the abnormal order of the universe; show me a normal event and I shall call it miraculous because it is normal. ~ Carlos Fuentes

The new world economic order is not an exercise in philanthropy, but in enlightened self-interest for everyone concerned. ~ Carlos Fuentes

I am a morning writer; I am writing at eight-thirty in longhand and I keep at it until twelve-thirty, when I go for a swim. Then I come back, have lunch, and read in the afternoon until I take my walk for the next day's writing. ~ Carlos Fuentes

You start by writing to live. You end by writing so as not to die. ~ Carlos Fuentes

I am not interested in slice of life, what I want is a slice of the imagination. ~ Carlos Fuentes

In the name of certainty, the greatest crimes have been committed against humanity. ~ Carlos Fuentes

Since in the world you imagines, a world without power and money, with no prohibitions, with no pain or death, each man would be God, and God therefore would not be possible. He would be a lie, because His attributes would be those of every man, woman and child: grace, immortality and supreme good. ~ Carlos Fuentes

... is it the young who pass death to the old, or do the old bequeath it to the young?
― Carlos Fuentes, Terra Nostra ~ Carlos Fuentes

Writing is a struggle against silence. ~ Carlos Fuentes

I have two children who died before reaching 30, so who am I to complain about being alive? ~ Carlos Fuentes

Work is what saves you. ~ Carlos Fuentes

He thought that even naturalness can be feigned; at times, a mask disguises too well the expressions of a face that does not exist either outside or under it. ~ Carlos Fuentes

The historical problem of the United States is to admit that it is a multiracial and multi-ethnic nation. ~ Carlos Fuentes

We shall have nothing to say in regard to our own death. ~ Carlos Fuentes

Alessandra approached the geniuses of the past to give them life with her attention, which was the form her affection took: paying attention. ~ Carlos Fuentes

The women I have loved I have desired for themselves, but also because I feared myself. ~ Carlos Fuentes

And don't give me the same old story:
"We're in Mexico. Pray."
You'd be better off taking a snake rattle. ~ Carlos Fuentes

I use a lot of film images, analogies, and imagination. ~ Carlos Fuentes

What I want is to respond to the challenge posed by the mass media - to permit the novel to say what can only be said by narrative - to allow it to be itself. ~ Carlos Fuentes

Love can isolate us from everything around us. But in its absence, we can be filled with the fear that something comparable exists. ~ Carlos Fuentes

...uncontrolled passions are like poison. Dormant, they are vices, they feed the soul, and the soul, deceived, or believing it is being nourished, is in fact being poisoned by its own unknown and unruly passion. Is it true, as other heretics, the Cathars, believed, that the best way to rid oneself of passion is to bring it into the open and indulge it, with no restraint of any kind? ~ Carlos Fuentes

Literature is a wound from which flows the indispensable divorce between words and things. All our blood can flow out of that hole. ~ Carlos Fuentes

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. ~ Carlos Fuentes

The mystery of other individuals, señor caballero, is ordinarily grief we neither share nor understand. ~ Carlos Fuentes

There must be something beyond slaughter and barbarism to support the existence of mankind and we must all help search for it. ~ Carlos Fuentes

Envy is resentment of good things that happen to other people. Jealousy increases the importance of the person we wish belonged only to us. Envy, as I told you, is poison, and futile - we want to be the other person. But jealousy is generous - we want the other person to be ours. ~ Carlos Fuentes

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. ~ Carlos Fuentes

He felt satisfied, and that sensation should have put him on his guard; happiness is a momentary trap that disguises stubborn problems and makes us feel more vulnerable than ever to the blind legitmacy of bad luck. ~ Carlos Fuentes

Under the veneer of Westernization, the cultures of the Indian world - which have existed for 30,000 years! - continue to live. Sometimes in a magical way, sometimes in the shadows. ~ Carlos Fuentes

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. ~ Carlos Fuentes

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. ~ Carlos Fuentes

The great wheel of fire of ancient wisdom, silence and word engendering the myth of the origin, human action engendering the epic voyage toward the other; historical violence revealing the tragic flaw of the hero who must then return to the land of origin; myth of death and renewal and silence from which new words and images will arise, keeps on turning in spite of the blindness of purely lineal thought. ~ Carlos Fuentes

Without its changing shape or dimensions all of a lifetime's memories fit miraculously within it, perhaps revealing a mystery ... Memory was not something that overflowed or was shoehorned into the shape of an object; it was something that was distilled, transformed, with each new experience. ~ Carlos Fuentes

For me, life without literature is inconceivable. I think that Don Quixote in a physical sense never existed, but Don Quixote exists more than anybody who existed in 1605. Much more. There's nobody who can compete with Don Quixote or with Hamlet. So in the end we have the reality of the book as the reality of the world and the reality of history. ~ Carlos Fuentes

I must write the book out in my head now, before I sit down. ~ Carlos Fuentes

Diplomacy in a sense is the opposite of writing. You have to disperse yourself so much: the lady who comes in crying because she's had a fight with the secretary; exports and imports; students in trouble; thumbtacks for the embassy. ~ Carlos Fuentes

He opens his window and motions for me to open mine. When I do, he tries to say something. His voice barely carries through the sound of the rain coming down hard between us.
I lean out the car window. "What?"
He leans out his window, meeting me halfway. We're both wet and soaked, but neither of us seems to care. "Don't run away from me when I need to tell you somethin' important."
"What?" I say, hoping he doesn't notice the tears running down my face, and praying they're getting mixed up with the rain.
"Tonight was ... well, it was perfect for me, too. You've turned my world upside down. I've fallen in love with you, chica, and it scares the fuckin' shit outta me. I've been shakin' all night, because I knew it. I've tried to deny it, to make you think I wanted you as a fake girlfriend, but that was a lie."
"I love you, Kiara," he says before his lips move forward and meet mine. ~ Simone Elkeles

Writing requires the concentration of the writer, demands that nothing else be done except that. ~ Carlos Fuentes

I'd always admired the intellectuals who had made the transition into politics - Mario Vargas Llosa in Peru, Vaclav Havel in the Czech Republic, Carlos Fuentes in Mexico - but I knew that many of them had failed, and in any event, I wasn't exactly in their league. ~ Michael Ignatieff

Power does not alter a man's character. It merely reveals it. ~ Carlos Fuentes

Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror. ~ Carlos Fuentes

Look at me, chica." When she does, I repeat, "Eres hermosa."
"What does it mean?"
"You're beautiful. ~ Simone Elkeles

Did I ever tell you that Alex loves you so much he got your name tattooed all over his body? Hell, he even got your name branded into the back of his neck."
"They say 'LB,' Carlos. The initials for Latino Blood."
"No, no, no. You've got it all wrong. He wants everyone to think that, but in reality it means Lover of Brittany. LB, get it? ~ Simone Elkeles

Myth is a past with a future, exercising itself in the present. ~ Carlos Fuentes

The novel is the privileged vehicle of two ways of being: narrative and freedom: to be new (novel) in a speech open to all, and to be free in a speech that never concludes. ~ Carlos Fuentes

But history does repeat itself; that is the comedy and the crime of history. Men learn nothing. Times change. Scenes change. Names change. But passions are the same. ~ Carlos Fuentes

No, it's not that they're bad. It's that they're obliged to pretend they're good. They've been brought up to deceive and be cunning, to protect themselves from our society. I don't want to be like that. ~ Carlos Fuentes

Incredible the animal that first dreamed of another animal. ~ Carlos Fuentes

What America does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is to understand others. ~ Carlos Fuentes

Didn't you learn anything from my mistakes?" he asks.
Shit, when Alex was in the Latino Blood back in Chicago I worshiped him. "You don't want to hear my answer to that. ~ Simone Elkeles

Can I request another peer guide, One who isn't so happy to be at school at 7:30 a.m.? ~ Simone Elkeles

Finished, the book begins. ~ Carlos Fuentes

Carlos: "I'm 22." Logan: "I'm 22." James: "I'm 12." Kendall: "You have a really deep voice for a 12 year old." James:"I'm maturing quickly. ~ Big Time Rush

The artistic part of us all - I think that the easiest way to appreciate this - is through architecture. Architecture is very impressive; the beauty of buildings, temples. ~ Carlos Slim

When Alex leaves a little later, Carlos steps forward. "Need help?"
I shake my head.
"Are you ever gonna talk to me again? Dammit, Kiara, enough with the silent treatment. I'd rather have you say your little two-word sentences than stop talkin' altogether. Hell, just flip
me off again."
I toss my backpack in the backseat and start the engine.
"Where are you goin'?" Carlos asks, stepping in front of my car.
I beep.
"I'm not movin'," he says.
My response is another beep. It's not an intimidating, deep beep like most cars, but it's the best my car can give.
He places both hands on the hood.
"Move," I say.
He moves all right. With pantherlike quickness, Carlos jumps through the open passenger window, feet first.
"You should get the door fixed," he says. ~ Simone Elkeles

I am a night creature, and I write from midnight till dawn, secluded in my office and surrounded by my collection of dragons (I have 400 of them). I only use Macintosh computers, which I name in dynastic order. Right now I'm using MacDragon 5. Only the devil is able to decipher my handwriting. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon