Death is the great Maecenas, Death is the great angel of writing. You must write because you are not going to live any more.

Most writers in Mexico have had posts as ambassadors, secretaries - that is no longer the case. Now a writer can live off writing. He has an audience: there are publishing houses, there are newspapers - so the situation is not as terrible as it used to be when there were no means and he had to go into government service, be an ambassador or a cabinet minister, etc. So, things are changing in the sense that the civil society is now the protagonist. The writer therefore occupies a different position, but no less influential than in the past, in a new, democratic society.

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

The United States has written the white history of the United States. It now needs to write the black, Latino, Indian, Asian and Caribbean history of the United States.

In literature, you know only what you imagine

Incredible the animal that first dreamed of another animal.

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.