Quotes By Carlos Fuentes

Work is what saves you.

Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror.

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.

In Latin America, even atheists are Catholics.

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.

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

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 heritages, because we considered them backward and barbaric. We looked towards France, England and the U.S., to become progressive democratic republics.

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

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

Diplomacy in a sense is the opposite of writing. You have to disperse yourself so much: the lady who comes in crying because she's had a fight with the secretary; exports and imports; students in trouble; thumbtacks for the embassy.

I have no literary fears.

I'm a writer, not a genre.

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.

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