Carlos Fuentes Quotes

I Am A Literary Animal. For Me, Everything Ends In Literature.

I Had The Good Fortune Of Having A Happy, Closely Knit Family.

One Puts Off The Biography Like You Put Off Death. To Write An Autobiography Is To Etch The Words On Your Own Gravestone.

I Have No Literary Fears.

Cuba Needs A Dose Of Perestroika.

At 50 I Find There Is A Long Line Of Characters And Shapes Demanding Words Just Outside My Window.

I Must Write The Book Out In My Head Now, Before I Sit Down.

Anything Would Be Better In The Us Than What You Have. As A Government It's Really Very Low Quality, Given The Fact That This Country Produces Eminent Intellectuals, Has Great Universities, And Then The People Who Arrive In Government Are Very Mediocre. The Latin American Situation Has Been Very Different In The First Place, Because Writers Have Spoken For Those Who Have No Voice. The Rate Of Illiteracy, Poverty, Joblessness In Latin America Has Been So Great Throughout Our History That If The Writers Didn't Speak Out For The People, Nobody Would.

Things Have Changed In Latin America Now. We Mostly Have Democratic Governments In Latin America, So The Position Of The Writer Has Changed. It Is Not As Neruda Used To Say, That A Latin American Writer Walks Around With The Body Of His People On His Back. Now, We Have Citizens, We Have Public Means Of Expression, Political Parties, Congress, Unions. So, The Writer's Position Has Changed, We Now Consider Ourselves To Be Citizens - Not Spokespeople For Everybody - But Citizens That Participate In The Political And Social Process Of The Country.

The United States Still Thinks That Mexico Is A Nineteenth Century Industrial Society. It Isn't That Any Longer, It Has To Adapt To A New Reality. But We Have A Grave Responsibility In Mexico, Which Is To Give Work To Our Own People. As Long As We Have A System That Denies Work To 50 Percent Of The Population, You'll Have Immigrants Coming To The United States.

Now The Masses Of Latin America Are Electing Governments They Feel Can Take Forward The Democratic Reforms Of The Last 20 Years, And Transform Them Into Social And Economic Reforms. This Is, I Think, Extremely Important, Because It Also Means That The Left Has Abandoned The Revolutionary Solution Proposed By Che Guevara And Has Taken The Democratic Path.

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.