You Start By Writing To Live. You

Diplomacy In A Sense Is The Opposite Of Writing. You Have To Disperse Yourself So Much: The Lady Who Comes In Crying Because Shes Had A Fight With The Secretary; Exports And Imports; Students In Trouble; Thumbtacks For The Embassy.

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.

Most Writers In Mexico Have Had Posts As Ambassadors, Secretaries - That Is No Longer The Case. Now A Writer Can Live Off Writing. He Has An Audience: There Are Publishing Houses, There Are Newspapers - So The Situation Is Not As Terrible As It Used To Be When There Were No Means And He Had To Go Into Government Service, Be An Ambassador Or A Cabinet Minister, Etc. So, Things Are Changing In The Sense That The Civil Society Is Now The Protagonist. The Writer Therefore Occupies A Different Position, But No Less Influential Than In The Past, In A New, Democratic Society.

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

You Have An Absolute Freedom In Mexican Writing Today In Which You Dont Necessarily Have To Deal With The Mexican Identity. You Know Why? Because We Have An Identity... We Know Who We Are. We Know What It Means To Be A Mexican.