Carlos Fuentes

Novelist

44 Quotes

The real bombs are my books, not me.

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.

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.

I started my own magazine with drawings, commentary, news, film reviews and drawings.

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

You have an absolute freedom in Mexican writing today in which you don't 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.

Don't classify me, read me.

There are now 30-year-old Mexican writers who do great novels in which Mexico isn't even mentioned.

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.

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

I love having critics for breakfast.

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

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.

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

I like fighting. I get into rows all the time.

Cuba needs a dose of perestroika.

I've lost audiences, I've recovered them.

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

I have no literary fears.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

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