Quotes from Daniel Alarcon

Nepotism is the lowest and least imaginative form of corruption.

That morning, he was afraid of becoming old, and it was a very specific kind of old age he feared, one which had nothing to do with the number of years since your birth. He feared the premature old age of missed opportunities.

Nothing builds community like complaining.

They spoke of the crowds that had filled the plaza: the people, always myopic, always easy to fool.

What does the end of a war mean if not that one side ran out of men willing to die?

What does a car bomb say about poverty, or the execution of a rural mayor explain about disenfranchisement?... The war had become, it it wasn't from the beginning, an indecipherable text.

A man should cause an impression," she said. "He should leave you with something to think about. Without that, there's no magic.

Memory is a great deceiver, grief and longing cloud the past, and recollections, even vivid ones, fade.

Luz's manner of speaking made it clear that she had no idea what she might say next. It wasn't that she made things up, strictly speaking--only that facts were merely a point of departure for her.

He admired this too: their ability to preserve joy at any cost, the way prehistoric man might have preserved fire.

The bond between parent and child is chemical, fierce, and inexplicable, even if that parent is a sworn killer. This connection cannot be measured; it at once more subtle and more powerful than science.

He imagined her impressed by his maturity, by his willingness to share her with another man. But this formulation was partial. It did not take into account the fact that she'd loved him, or that he'd broken her heart. It did not consider that her heart might be broken still, or that every time they slept together, it broke a little more.

Heartbreak is like shattered glass: while it's impossible that two pieces could splinter in precisely the same pattern, in he end, it doesn't matter, because the effect is identical.

You don't sound like a scientist; you sound like a poet." Rey smiled. "Can I be both?" "But you'd rather be a poet." "Who wouldn't?" he said.

The phone collapsed distances, just as the radio did, and, like the radio, it relied on the miracle of imagination: one had to concentrate deeply, plunge headlong into it.

Let's say you're sitting in a group meeting when the counselor calls you a gang member. You're offended. You hang around with people of the same cloth, the same experience, the same sufferings. These are your friends, like family. You don't think of yourselves as gang members, but of course, technically, that's what you are. And let's say you embrace the label.

But if what a novel exudes has not been felt properly or seriously or deeply enough by the writer, then it will show and I will become tremendously bored and irritated.

SANTIAGO RONCAGLIOLO: I always start from real emotions and experiences because I think that gives the narrative a lot of force. But the act of writing consists precisely in distorting those facts through fiction, injecting them with lies, until fantasy overtakes reality. The truth is never enough. That's why I write novels.

Ellos no querían hablar sobre la guerra, suponía él, querían hablar sobre sus tíos, sus primos, sus vecinos en aquellos pueblos que abandonaron hacía tanto tiempo; sobre cómo era el olor de la tierra en su hogar, el ruido de la lluvia al caer en ráfagas sobre las copas de los árboles, los colores chillones de la campiña en flor.

But I also think I have never seen it in a book—the thing I needed to read, just then, and this feeling makes me agitated and restless: it makes me want to write the book where someone could find the thing I needed to read in the last seven or eight years.

used to plan endlessly, but it never made much difference. Everything happens in the actual writing, for me. Now I just live in a book for three years or so. The computer is always on. I make decisions. I revise decisions. The book falls apart. The book comes together in a different way. The new book falls apart. I hold my nerve. The book I start writing—the easy, confident, public book—always turns fraudulent, for me, and I realize that I have

Writing is nothing if not solving problems you've created for yourself. There are no outside solutions or methods.

The story always starts with the character. In a way, there's no decision. If there's no character there's no story.

Let's take the city for example. I love that place-I realize this is a controversial statement in this crowd, but I do. Listen. I love its grey skies, its rude people, its disorder, its noise. I love the stories I've lived there, the landmarks...