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.

The citizen takes his city for granted far too often. He forgets to marvel.

Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.

When we have a better, more social, more responsible, less egotistical, less corrupt system, Mexico will be able to give work to the millions of Mexicans who have to build our roads, dams, schools, all the things that are left undone in Mexico while we have the manpower. There is something very bad going on, on both sides of the border in Mexico and the US. But the worker is a worker, not a criminal. So, I am in favor of a solution such as the Kennedy-McCain proposals that make it clear what steps have to be taken to accept the fact that the US needs foreign workers.

Writing is a struggle against silence.

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

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.