Quote

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

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
Young
Surest
Feel
Elders
Reveal
Feels
Cruel
Children
Cruelty
Things
Toward
Malaise
Ignorance
Residue
Strange
Insufficiency

More quotes by Carlos Fuentes

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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.
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Love can isolate us from everything around us. But in its absence, we can be filled with the fear that something comparable exists.
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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 am a literary animal. For me, everything ends in literature.
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The French equate intelligence with rational discourse, the Russians with intense soul-searching. For the Mexican, intelligence is inseparable from maliciousness.
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The women I have loved I have desired for themselves, but also because I feared myself.
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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.
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There is no creation without tradition. No one creates from nothing.
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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.
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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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Culture consists of connections, not of separations: to specialize is to isolate.
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The citizen takes his city for granted far too often. He forgets to marvel.
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No government functions without the grease of corruption.
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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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Reading, writing, teaching, learning, are all activities aimed at introducing civilizations to each other.
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Incredible the animal that first dreamed of another animal.
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In literature, you know only what you imagine
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Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror.
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I like fighting. I get into rows all the time.
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What America does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is to understand others.
Carlos Fuentes