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What America does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is to understand others.

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
Doe
America
Best
Worst
Understand
Others

More quotes by 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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Culture consists of connections, not of separations: to specialize is to isolate.
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I have no literary fears.
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No, it's not that they're bad. It's that they're obliged to pretend they're good. They've been brought up to deceive and be cunning, to protect themselves from our society. I don't want to be like that.
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I am not interested in slice of life, what I want is a slice of the imagination.
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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!
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What's happened at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is one of the grossest violations of human rights under the Geneva Conventions that we have record of. It is simply monstrous.
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I started my own magazine with drawings, commentary, news, film reviews and drawings.
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You have an absolute freedom in Mexican writing today in which you dont 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.
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Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.
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I discovered very quickly that criticism is a form of optimism, and that when you are silent about the shortcomings of your society, you're very pessimistic about that society. And it's only when you speak truthfully about it that you show your faith in that society.
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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 like fighting. I get into rows all the time.
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There must be something beyond slaughter and barbarism to support the existence of mankind and we must all help search for it.
Carlos Fuentes
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You start by writing to live. You end by writing so as not to die.
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Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror.
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Robinson Crusoe, the first capitalist hero, is a self-made man who accepts objective reality and then fashions it to his needs through the work ethic, common sense, resilience, technology, and, if need be, racism and imperialism.
Carlos Fuentes
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I live through risk. Without risk there is no art. You should always be on the edge of a cliff about to fall down and break your neck.
Carlos Fuentes
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I am a literary animal. For me, everything ends in literature.
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Incredible the animal that first dreamed of another animal.
Carlos Fuentes