Culture consists of connections, not of separations: to specialize is to isolate.

There are people whose external reality is generous because it is transparent, because you can read everything, accept everything, understand everything about them: people who carry their own sun with them.

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.

The United States still thinks that Mexico is a nineteenth century industrial society. It isn't that any longer, it has to adapt to a new reality. But we have a grave responsibility in Mexico, which is to give work to our own people. As long as we have a system that denies work to 50 percent of the population, you'll have immigrants coming to the United States.

Some writers achieve great popularity and then disappear forever. The bestseller lists of the past fifty years are, with a few lively exceptions, a sombre graveyard of dead books.

Don't classify me, read me. I'm a writer, not a genre.

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.