Carlos Fuentes Quotes

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.

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

Writing is a struggle against silence.

Culture consists of connections, not of separations: to specialize is to isolate.

Don't classify me, read me. I'm a writer, not a genre.

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.

I need, therefore I imagine.

I discovered very quickly that criticism is a form of optimism, and that when you are silent about the shortcomings of your society, you're very pessimistic about that society. And it's only when you speak truthfully about it that you show your faith in that society.

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

In a world torn by every kind of fundamentalism - religious, ethnic, nationalist and tribal - we must grant first place to economic fundamentalism, with its religious conviction that the market, left to its own devices, is capable of resolving all our problems. This faith has its own ayatollahs. Its church is neo-liberalism; its creed is profit; its prayers are for monopolies.

No government functions without the grease of corruption.

One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It's one of the oldest urges in mankind. It's a way of stalling death.

Memory is satisfied desire.

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

There is no creation without tradition. No one creates from nothing.

Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror.

Reading, writing, teaching, learning, are all activities aimed at introducing civilizations to each other.

Some writers achieve great popularity and then disappear forever. The bestseller lists of the past fifty years are, with a few lively exceptions, a sombre graveyard of dead books.

Love can isolate us from everything around us. But in its absence, we can be filled with the fear that something comparable exists.

In literature, you know only what you imagine

You start by writing to live. You end by writing so as not to die.

I live through risk. Without risk there is no art. You should always be on the edge of a cliff about to fall down and break your neck.

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

Retrospectively, I would agree with Luis Bunuel that sex without sin is like an egg without salt.

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