Richard Rodriguez

Language is a social event.

— Richard Rodriguez

“Human unhappiness is evidence of our immortality.”

— Richard Rodriguez

But one does not forget by trying to forget. One only remembers.

— Richard Rodriguez

There are things so deeply personal that they can be revealed only to strangers.

— Richard Rodriguez

Learning can cause social fracture. Your people start expressing themselves.

— Richard Rodriguez

“The impersonality of the written word made it the easiest means of exchange...”

— Richard Rodriguez

I write about race in America in hopes of undermining the notion of race in America.

— Richard Rodriguez

“This is what matters to me: the story of the scholarship boy who returns home one summer from college to discover bewildering…

— Richard Rodriguez

A primary reason for my success in the classroom was that I couldn't forget that schooling was changing me and separating me…

— Richard Rodriguez

Henry Ford didn't just create a cheap way of getting away from your in-laws; he basically understood that there was something in…

— Richard Rodriguez

My decision was sparked by affirmative action. There was a point in my life when affirmative action would have meant something to…

— Richard Rodriguez

You don't know Mexico, man. You have trivialized Mexico. You are a fool about Mexico if you think that Mexico is five…

— Richard Rodriguez

My grandmother would always tell me that I was hers, that I was Mexican. That was her role. It was not my…

— Richard Rodriguez

When a society doesn't know what to do with its young, it's in real trouble. When the young don't know what to…

— Richard Rodriguez

Jose Vasconcelos, Mexico's great federalist and apologist, has coined a wonderful term, la raza cósmica, "the cosmic race," a new people having…

— Richard Rodriguez

The fact that we're all hyphenating our names suggests that we are afraid of being assimilated. I was talking on the BBC…

— Richard Rodriguez

But very early in life I became part of the majority culture and now don't think of myself as a minority. Yet…

— Richard Rodriguez

I keep trying to tell people that Los Angeles is already the largest Indian city in the U.S., that there are Toltecs…

— Richard Rodriguez

I came from a white middle class neighborhood. Was I expected to go back there and teach the woman next door about…

— Richard Rodriguez

After the second chapter of Days of Obligation, which is about the death of a friend of mine from AIDS, was published…

— Richard Rodriguez

The notion that you go to a public institution in order to learn private information about yourself is absurd. We used to…

— Richard Rodriguez

We're looking at complexity. We're looking at blond kids in Beverley Hills who can speak Spanish because they have been raised by…

— Richard Rodriguez

I have a good black friend who is a doctor, but he didn't become a doctor because he saw other black men…

— Richard Rodriguez

Those people who say that America is finite are some sense right. The environmental movement, for example, has a great wisdom to…

— Richard Rodriguez

“Most, I loved James Baldwin's essays. There was to a Baldwin essay a metropolitan elegance I envied, a refusal of the livid.…

— Richard Rodriguez

In some ways I consider myself more Chinese, because I live in San Francisco, which is becoming a predominantly Asian city. I…

— Richard Rodriguez

Maybe the American Dream is too rich for us now in the U.S. Maybe we're losing it because we are not like…

— Richard Rodriguez

'm constantly depressed by the Mexican gang members I meet in East L.A. who essentially live their lives inside five or six…

— Richard Rodriguez

The first book by an African American I read was Carl T. Rowan's memoir, Go South to Sorrow. I found it on…

— Richard Rodriguez

When the Irish nun said to me, "Speak your name loud and clear so that all the boys and girls can hear…

— Richard Rodriguez

Cultures, when they meet, influence one another, whether people like it or not. But Americans don't have any way of describing this…

— Richard Rodriguez

Now we have this idea that, not only do you go to first grade to learn your family's language, but you go…

— Richard Rodriguez

So many of my friends tell me they’re not religious. I’m like, Of course you’re religious. You watch Oprah Winfrey, don’t you?

— Richard Rodriguez

Education is that human process of feeling your body mature, feeding your mind with ideas that it never had before, or information…

— Richard Rodriguez

Mexico was most powerfully my father's smile and not, as you might otherwise imagine, not language, not pigment.

— Richard Rodriguez

There was a poll released yesterday that said most people would rather give up sex than give up their cell phones.

— Richard Rodriguez

“start working- rarely resting- seemingly driven by a fatalistic sense that work that has to be done was best done as quickly…

— Richard Rodriguez

But America isn't a country of family values; Mexico is a country of family values. This is a country of people who…

— Richard Rodriguez

“If, because of my schooling, I had grown culturally separated from my parents, my education finally had given me ways of speaking…

— Richard Rodriguez

I don't deny people their fantasy life, but I do think that we desperately need to start realizing just how complicated our…

— Richard Rodriguez