For me, life without literature is inconceivable. I think that Don Quixote in a physical sense never existed, but Don Quixote exists more than anybody who existed in 1605. Much more. There's nobody who can compete with Don Quixote or with Hamlet. So in the end we have the reality of the book as the reality of the world and the reality of history.
Carlos FuentesWhat's happened at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is one of the grossest violations of human rights under the Geneva Conventions that we have record of. It is simply monstrous.
Carlos FuentesThere is no creation without tradition; the 'new' is an inflection on a preceding form; novelty is always a variation on the past.
Carlos FuentesLiterature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.
Carlos FuentesYou, yesterday, did the usual things, just as any day, You don't know if it's worth remembering. You would prefer to remember, there lying in the half-darkness of the bedroom, not what has happened already but what is going to happen. In your half-darkness your eyes would prefer to look ahead, not behind, and they do not know how to foresee the past.
Carlos Fuentes