Quotes by Carlos Fuentes

“Normality; show me normality, seor caballero, and I will show you an exception to the abnormal order of the universe; show me a normal event and I shall call it miraculous because it is normal.”

“Like all of Latin America, Mexico after independence in 1821 turned its back on a triple heritage: on the Spanish heritage, because we were newly liberated colonies, and on our Indian and black her...”

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

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

“I use a lot of film images, analogies, and imagination.”

“Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me.”

“Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror.”

“my books are derived from city images, and the city of my dreams or nightmares is Mexico City. (The Art of Fiction, No. 68. The Paris Review, No. 82, Winter 1981.)”

“Cristo quería a los justos, habitaba las buenas conciencias, pertenecía a los hombres de bien, a la gente decente, a las buenas reputaciones. ¡Que cargara el diablo con los humildes, con los pecado...”

“Power does not alter a man's character. It merely reveals it.”

“all that was left to me was certain images and all of them spoke to me of the collapse of a cruel world and the slow construction in its stead of another world, equally cruel.”

“He himself felt defeated because he was fighting against something he did not hate, because he did not understand the fratricidal hatred between the sons of Araby and Israel, and because he loved a...”

“Since I neither want not can influence the events of the world, my mission is to preserve the internal integrity and equilibrium of my mind; that will be in which the manor in which I recover the p...”

“Normality; show me normality, señor caballero, and I will show you an exception to the abnormal order of the universe; show me a normal event and I shall call it miraculous because it is normal.”

“…my books are derived from city images, and the city of my dreams or nightmares is Mexico City. (The Art of Fiction, No. 68. The Paris Review, No. 82, Winter 1981.)”

“The facade of the Conquest, severe yet jocund, with one foot in the dead Old World and the other in the New.”

“What the United States does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is understand others.”

“The North American world blinds us with its energy; we cannot see ourselves, we must see you.”

“If the Soviet Union can give up the Brezhnev Doctrine for the Sinatra Doctrine, the United States can give up the James Monroe Doctrine for the Marilyn Monroe Doctrine: Let's all go to bed wearing ...”

“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.”