Carlos Fuentes

thumb|Carlos Fuentes in 2002 Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 – May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist, short-story writer, essayist, playwright and critic. He taught in several American and British universities, and served as his country’s ambassador to France. Quotes The facade of the Conquest, severe yet jocund, with one foot in the dead Old World and the other in the New. Describing a Mexican baroque church The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962) But perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror; nature rejects that order, preferring instead to proceed with the multiple disorder of the certainty of freedom. Terra Nostra, Pt. 1, p. 253 (1975) What the United States does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is understand others. "To See Ourselves as Others See Us", in Time, June 16, 1986. The North American world blinds us with its energy; we cannot see ourselves, we must see you. "How I Started to Write", in Rick Simonson and Scott Walker (eds.) The Graywolf Annual Five: Multi-Cultural Literacy (St. Paul, Minn.: Graywolf Press, 1988); cited from Myself With Others (London: Pan, 1989) p. 5. Don't classify me, read me. I'm a writer, not a genre. "How I Started to Write", in Rick Simonson and Scott Walker (eds.) The Graywolf Annual Five: Multi-Cultural Literacy (St. Paul, Minn.: Graywolf Press, 1988); cited from Myself With Others (London: Pan, 1989) p. 27. 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 the perfume we like best. "Doing It Our Way", New Statesman & Society, 2 February 1990, tr. Alfred MacAdam 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. As quoted in International Herald Tribune (Paris, 5 November 1991) No government functions without the grease of corruption. La Silla del Águila (The Eagle's Throne) (2003) [The Mexican revolution] was a break with the past to recover the past. We were trying to deny we had an Indian and a black and a Spanish past. The Mexican Revolution accepted all heritages. It allowed Mexico to be mestizo. Quoted in Anne-Marie O'Connor, "Novelist Carlos Fuentes confronts mortality and his country's future", Los Angeles Times, 26 April 2006 Can you imagine me coming to this country to blow up a post office? I told them, "My bombs are my books." About being denied a visa to the United States in the early 1960s after he praised the Cuban Revolution; as quoted by Anne-Marie O'Connor, "Novelist Carlos Fuentes confronts mortality and his country's future", Los Angeles Times, 26 April 2006 A tropical Mussolini Describing Hugo Chavez Quoted in The Economist, 19 May 2012, p. 90 Quotes about Carlos Fuentes I was influenced by all of them-by García Márquez, by [[Carlos Fuentes, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, José Donoso, so many of them-some of my own generation, like Eduardo Galeano. It's easy for me to write because I don't have to invent anything. They already found a voice, a way of telling us to ourselves, so it's easy. 1994 interview in Conversations with Isabel Allende (1999) I admire him a lot. He has done a lot to bring the Latin American situation to the American consciousness. Rosario Ferré interview in Backtalk: Women Writers Speak Out by Donna Marie Perry (1993) Cortázar is the one who is closest to my way of understanding the act of writing. And nearer to my heart. I admire Carlos Fuentes on the opposite extreme of the equation. That is why I wrote a book on both of them, Entrecruzamientos: Cortázar/Fuentes. Luisa Valenzuela Interview (2018) External links Category:Novelists from Mexico Category:Essayists Category:Critics Category:Ambassadors Category:1928 births Category:2012 deaths Category:Short story writers from Mexico Category:Playwrights from Mexico Category:Postmodern authors