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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.

Carlos Fuentes

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Carlos Fuentes
Age: 83 †
Born: 1928
Born: November 11
Died: 2012
Died: May 15
Diplomat
Journalist
Lawyer
Novelist
Poet Lawyer
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Panamá
Experience
Factual
Book
Wrote
Good
Based
Things
Writer
Think
Already
Thinking
Knew
Books
Reading

More quotes by Carlos Fuentes

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In literature, you know only what you imagine
Carlos Fuentes
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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, things other, things that reveal our own ignorance or insufficiency
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What America does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is to understand others.
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I believe in books that do not go to a ready-made public. I'm looking for readers I would like to make. To win them, to create readers rather than to give something that readers are expecting. That would bore me to death.
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I like fighting. I get into rows all the time.
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I started my own magazine with drawings, commentary, news, film reviews and drawings.
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I am not interested in slice of life, what I want is a slice of the imagination.
Carlos Fuentes
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The Mexicans descend from the Aztecs the Peruvians descend from the Incas the Argentineans descend from the boats.
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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.
Carlos Fuentes
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In Latin America, even atheists are Catholics.
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Mexico is a very complex, mysterious country. I will never understand it fully, and that's why I write so much about it, in order to try to understand it.
Carlos Fuentes
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Reading, writing, teaching, learning, are all activities aimed at introducing civilizations to each other.
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The citizen takes his city for granted far too often. He forgets to marvel.
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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.
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I need, therefore I imagine.
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I’ve been thrashed by the critics. I love having critics for breakfast. I’ve been having them for 30 years in Mexico - just eating them like chicken and then throwing the bones away. They have not survived, I have!
Carlos Fuentes
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There is no creation without tradition. No one creates from nothing.
Carlos Fuentes
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Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me.
Carlos Fuentes
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Retrospectively, I would agree with Luis Bunuel that sex without sin is like an egg without salt.
Carlos Fuentes
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I had the good fortune of having a happy, closely knit family.
Carlos Fuentes