Carlos Fuentes Quotes

72 quotes in 855 categories

• The Mexicans descend from the Aztecs; the Peruvians descend from the Incas; the Argentineans descend from the boats.
• In literature, you know only what you imagine
• The new world economic order is not an exercise in philanthropy, but in enlightened self-interest for everyone concerned.
• In the name of certainty, the greatest crimes have been committed against humanity.
• Reading, writing, teaching, learning, are all activities aimed at introducing civilizations to each other.
• There must be something beyond slaughter and barbarism to support the existence of mankind and we must all help search for it.
• Religion is dogmatic. Politic is ideological. Reason must be logical, but literature has a privilege of being equivocal.
• By its very nature, the novel indicates that we are becoming. There is no final solution. There is no last word.
• What America does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is to understand others.
• You, yesterday, did the usual things, just as any day, You don't know if it's worth remembering. You would prefer to remember, there lying in…
• In a world torn by every kind of fundamentalism - religious, ethnic, nationalist and tribal - we must grant first place to economic fundamentalism, with…
• Death is the great Maecenas, Death is the great angel of writing. You must write because you are not going to live any more.
• For me, life without literature is inconceivable. I think that Don Quixote in a physical sense never existed, but Don Quixote exists more than anybody…
• I love having critics for breakfast
• Children know how to be cruel, and the cruelty of their elders is the surest residue of the malaise the young feel toward things strange,…
• The French equate intelligence with rational discourse, the Russians with intense soul-searching. For the Mexican, intelligence is inseparable from maliciousness.
• The language of Mexicans springs from abysmal extremes of power and impotence, domination and resentment.
• The women I have loved I have desired for themselves, but also because I feared myself.
• Retrospectively, I would agree with Luis Bunuel that sex without sin is like an egg without salt.
• There is no creation without tradition. No one creates from nothing.

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