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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.

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
Rational
Maliciousness
Intense
Equate
Intelligence
Russians
Soul
Inseparable
Mexican
Searching
Discourse
French

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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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In Latin America, even atheists are Catholics.
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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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Here among my books, my wife, my friends and my loves, I have plenty of reasons to keep living.
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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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The women I have loved I have desired for themselves, but also because I feared myself.
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I need, therefore I imagine.
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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.
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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.
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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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No government functions without the grease of corruption.
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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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In literature, you know only what you imagine
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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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Incredible the animal that first dreamed of another animal.
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Reading, writing, teaching, learning, are all activities aimed at introducing civilizations to each other.
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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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The Mexicans descend from the Aztecs the Peruvians descend from the Incas the Argentineans descend from the boats.
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