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The Contract Between The Author And The Reader Is A Game. And The Game . . . Is One Of The Greatest Invetions Of Western Civilization: The Game Of Telling Stories, Inventing Characters, And Creating The Imaginary Paradise Of The Individual, From Whence No One Can Be Expelled Because, In A Novel, No One Owns The Truth And Everyone Has The Right To Be Heard And Understood.

-Carlos Fuentes

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The Contract Between The

Carlos Fuentes

...

The Contract Between The Author And The Reader Is A Game. And The Game . . . Is One Of The Greatest Invetions Of Western Civilization: The Game Of Telling Stories, Inventing Characters, And Creating The Imaginary Paradise Of The Individual, From Whence No One Can Be Expelled Because, In A Novel, No One Owns The Truth And Everyone Has The Right To Be Heard And Understood.

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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 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.

I Have No Literary Fears.

Cuba Needs A Dose Of Perestroika.

There Is No Creation Without Tradition; The 'new' Is An Inflection On A Preceding Form; Novelty Is Always A Variation On The Past.

At 50 I Find There Is A Long Line Of Characters And Shapes Demanding Words Just Outside My Window.

I Use A Lot Of Film Images, Analogies, And Imagination.

Recognize Yourself In He And She Who Are Not Like You And Me.

I Always Felt A Little Worm Inside Me: 'now You Need To Write A Novel With A Woman Protagonist.

In The Name Of Certainty, The Greatest Crimes Have Been Committed Against Humanity.

I Must Write The Book Out In My Head Now, Before I Sit Down.

The French Equate Intelligence With Rational Discourse, The Russians With Intense Soul-searching. For The Mexican, Intelligence Is Inseparable From Maliciousness.

The Mexican Revolution Was A Break With The Past To Recover The Past. We Were Trying To Deny We Had An Indian And A Black And A Spanish Past. The Mexican Revolution Accepted All Heritages. It Allowed Mexico To Be Mestizo.

I Need, Therefore I Imagine.

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.

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.

Perfect Order Is The Forerunner Of Perfect Horror.

There Must Be Something Beyond Slaughter And Barbarism To Support The Existence Of Mankind And We Must All Help Search For It.

Contrary To The Macho Culture Of Mexico, Both My Grandmothers Were Very Brave Young Widows. I Was Always Very Close To These Hard-working, Intelligent Women.

The Language Of Mexicans Springs From Abysmal Extremes Of Power And Impotence, Domination And Resentment.

Literature Overtakes History, For Literature Gives You More Than One Life. It Expands Experience And Opens New Opportunities To Readers.

There Is No Creation Without Tradition. No One Creates From Nothing.

In Literature, You Know Only What You Imagine

The Mexicans Descend From The Aztecs; The Peruvians Descend From The Incas; The Argentineans Descend From The Boats.

Don't Classify Me, Read Me. I'm A Writer, Not A Genre.

Incredible The Animal That First Dreamed Of Another Animal.

The United States Condoned Dictatorships In Latin America For Much Of The 20th Century.

I Am A Mexican. The United States Lived Seventy-five Years With The One Party System In Mexico - The Pri - Without Batting An Eyelid, Never Demanding Democracy Of Mexico. Democracy Came Because Mexicans Fought For Democracy And Made A Democracy Out Of Our History, Our Possibilities, Our Perspectives. Democracy Is Not Something That Can Be Exported Like Coca-cola. It Has To Be Bred From The Inside, According To The Culture, The Conditions Of Each Country.

What America Does Best Is To Understand Itself. What It Does Worst Is To Understand Others.

Religion Is Dogmatic. Politic Is Ideological. Reason Must Be Logical, But Literature Has A Privilege Of Being Equivocal.

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.

Art Gives Life To What History Killed. Art Gives Voice To What History Denied, Silenced, Or Persecuted. Art Brings Truth To The Lies Of History.

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.

Retrospectively, I Would Agree With Luis Bunuel That Sex Without Sin Is Like An Egg Without Salt.

I Have Never Considered Myself A Writer In Exile Because I Grew Up Outside Of My Own Country, Because My Father Was A Diplomat. Therefore, I Grew Up In Brazil, Chile, Argentina, The United States, I Studied In Switzerland - So I've Always Had Perspective On My Country - I Am Thankful For That.

The Great Wheel Of Fire Of Ancient Wisdom, Silence And Word Engendering The Myth Of The Origin, Human Action Engendering The Epic Voyage Toward The Other; Historical Violence Revealing The Tragic Flaw Of The Hero Who Must Then Return To The Land Of Origin; Myth Of Death And Renewal And Silence From Which New Words And Images Will Arise, Keeps On Turning In Spite Of The Blindness Of Purely Lineal Thought.

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.

If The Soviet Union Can Give Up The Brezhnev Doctrine For The Sinatra Doctrine, The United States Can Give Up The James Monroe Doctrine For The Marilyn Monroe Doctrine: Let's All Go To Bed Wearing The Perfume We Like Best.

You, 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.

I Started My Own Magazine With Drawings, Commentary, News, Film Reviews And Drawings.

You Start By Writing To Live. You End By Writing So As Not To Die.

Children Know How To Be Cruel, And The Cruelty Of Their Elders Is The Surest Residue Of The Malaise The Young Feel Toward Things Strange, Things Other, Things That Reveal Our Own Ignorance Or Insufficiency

Now The Masses Of Latin America Are Electing Governments They Feel Can Take Forward The Democratic Reforms Of The Last 20 Years, And Transform Them Into Social And Economic Reforms. This Is, I Think, Extremely Important, Because It Also Means That The Left Has Abandoned The Revolutionary Solution Proposed By Che Guevara And Has Taken The Democratic Path.

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.

Memory Is Satisfied Desire.

I've Lost Audiences, I've Recovered Them.

I Live Through Risk. Without Risk There Is No Art. You Should Always Be On The Edge Of A Cliff About To Fall Down And Break Your Neck.

My System For Staying Young Is To Work A Lot, To Always Have A Project On The Go.

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.

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.

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.

Things Have Changed In Latin America Now. We Mostly Have Democratic Governments In Latin America, So The Position Of The Writer Has Changed. It Is Not As Neruda Used To Say, That A Latin American Writer Walks Around With The Body Of His People On His Back. Now, We Have Citizens, We Have Public Means Of Expression, Political Parties, Congress, Unions. So, The Writer's Position Has Changed, We Now Consider Ourselves To Be Citizens - Not Spokespeople For Everybody - But Citizens That Participate In The Political And Social Process Of The Country.

By Its Very Nature, The Novel Indicates That We Are Becoming. There Is No Final Solution. There Is No Last Word.

I Am Not Interested In Slice Of Life, What I Want Is A Slice Of The Imagination.

In A World Torn By Every Kind Of Fundamentalism - Religious, Ethnic, Nationalist And Tribal - We Must Grant First Place To Economic Fundamentalism, With Its Religious Conviction That The Market, Left To Its Own Devices, Is Capable Of Resolving All Our Problems. This Faith Has Its Own Ayatollahs. Its Church Is Neo-liberalism; Its Creed Is Profit; Its Prayers Are For Monopolies.

In Latin America, Even Atheists Are Catholics.

The Citizen Takes His City For Granted Far Too Often. He Forgets To Marvel.

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.

I Like Fighting. I Get Into Rows All The Time.

Love Can Isolate Us From Everything Around Us. But In Its Absence, We Can Be Filled With The Fear That Something Comparable Exists.

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!

To Read And Write Is A Paradise.

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.

Reading, Writing, Teaching, Learning, Are All Activities Aimed At Introducing Civilizations To Each Other.

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.

Here Among My Books, My Wife, My Friends And My Loves, I Have Plenty Of Reasons To Keep Living.

No Government Functions Without The Grease Of Corruption.

Chaos: It Has No Plural.

Anything Would Be Better In The Us Than What You Have. As A Government It's Really Very Low Quality, Given The Fact That This Country Produces Eminent Intellectuals, Has Great Universities, And Then The People Who Arrive In Government Are Very Mediocre. The Latin American Situation Has Been Very Different In The First Place, Because Writers Have Spoken For Those Who Have No Voice. The Rate Of Illiteracy, Poverty, Joblessness In Latin America Has Been So Great Throughout Our History That If The Writers Didn't Speak Out For The People, Nobody Would.

I Have Two Children Who Died Before Reaching 30, So Who Am I To Complain About Being Alive?

I Am A Literary Animal. For Me, Everything Ends In Literature.

The New World Economic Order Is Not An Exercise In Philanthropy, But In Enlightened Self-interest For Everyone Concerned.

Culture Consists Of Connections, Not Of Separations: To Specialize Is To Isolate.

Migration Is An Opportunity, Not A Problem. And In The Sense That It Is An Opportunity, It Goes On To A Bilateral Agreement, Between Mexico And The Us, The Us And The Dominican Republic, Whatever You Wish, And It Has To Be A Multilateral, International Event. I Am In Favor Of An International Union Of Migrant Workers That Really Takes On The Problems That Affect Europe, With The Migrants Coming From Africa, And The Us With The Migrants Coming From Latin America. It Has To Be Considered An International Question, With International Solutions, And With No Problems National Or International.

One Wants To Tell A Story, Like Scheherezade, In Order Not To Die. It's One Of The Oldest Urges In Mankind. It's A Way Of Stalling Death.

The Possibility Of Being As Free With The Camera As We Are With The Pen Is A Fantastic Prospect For The Creative Life Of The 21st Century.

The Contract Between The Author And The Reader Is A Game. And The Game . . . Is One Of The Greatest Invetions Of Western Civilization: The Game Of Telling Stories, Inventing Characters, And Creating The Imaginary Paradise Of The Individual, From Whence No One Can Be Expelled Because, In A Novel, No One Owns The Truth And Everyone Has The Right To Be Heard And Understood.

You Have An Absolute Freedom In Mexican Writing Today In Which You Dont Necessarily Have To Deal With The Mexican Identity. You Know Why? Because We Have An Identity... We Know Who We Are. We Know What It Means To Be A Mexican.

Death Is The Great Maecenas, Death Is The Great Angel Of Writing. You Must Write Because You Are Not Going To Live Any More.

Writing Is A Struggle Against Silence.

What'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.

Diplomacy In A Sense Is The Opposite Of Writing. You Have To Disperse Yourself So Much: The Lady Who Comes In Crying Because Shes Had A Fight With The Secretary; Exports And Imports; Students In Trouble; Thumbtacks For The Embassy.

I Had The Good Fortune Of Having A Happy, Closely Knit Family.

The Women I Have Loved I Have Desired For Themselves, But Also Because I Feared Myself.

One Puts Off The Biography Like You Put Off Death. To Write An Autobiography Is To Etch The Words On Your Own Gravestone.

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