Quotes from Carlos Fuentes

Work is what saves you.

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.

The real bombs are my books, not me.

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

In Latin America, even atheists are Catholics.

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

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

I had the good fortune of having a happy, closely knit family.

No government functions without the grease of corruption.

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.

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.

Don't classify me, read me.

The French equate intelligence with rational discourse, the Russians with intense soul-searching. For the Mexican, intelligence is inseparable from maliciousness.

Cuba needs a dose of perestroika.

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

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.

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.

I have no literary fears.

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

Here among my books, my wife, my friends and my loves, I have plenty of reasons to keep living.

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

I believe in books that do not go to a ready-made public. I'm looking for readers I would like to make. To win them, to create readers rather than to give something that readers are expecting. That would bore me to death.

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