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.
Carlos FuentesRead
There are now 30-year-old Mexican writers who do great novels in which Mexico isn't even mentioned.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the idea that creativity and talent can transcend cultural and geographical boundaries.
Carlos Fuentes highlights that a new generation of Mexican writers is producing significant literary works that may not directly engage with their nationality or culture. This suggests that art and storytelling can evolve beyond cultural limitations, focusing more on universal themes and human experiences.
Themes
LiteratureCreativityCultureIdentityWriting
In practice
Example use cases
In a literary discussion about modern authors, you might reference this quote to illustrate how themes in literature can transcend cultural roots.
More from Carlos Fuentes
All quotes βWriting is a struggle against silence.
Carlos FuentesRead
Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.
Carlos FuentesRead
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.
Carlos FuentesRead
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.
Carlos FuentesRead
You have an absolute freedom in Mexican writing today in which you don't 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.
Carlos FuentesRead
Similar quotes
The cry that 'fantasy is escapist' compared to the novel is only an echo of the older cry that novels are 'escapist' compared with biography, and to both cries one should make the same answer: that freedom to invent outweighs loyalty to mere happenstance, the accidents of history; and good readers should know how to filter a general applicability from a particular story.
Tom ShippeyRead
I think that an author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.
Benjamin DisraeliRead
I wish more Italian literature were translated and read in English. I've discovered so many extraordinary and diverse writers: Lalla Romano, Carlo Cassola. Beppe Fenoglio, Giorgio Manganelli, just to name a few.
Jhumpa LahiriRead
Sartre said that wars were acts and that, with literature, you could produce changes in history. Now, I don't think literature doesn't produce changes, but I think the social and political effect of literature is much less controllable than I thought.
Mario Vargas LlosaRead
What fiction offers us is an intimacy shorn of the messy contingencies of human existence - gender, race, class or age. Those moments of transcendence when we exclaim 'You know exactly what I mean!' depend for much of their force on the anonymous character of the intimacy between writer and reader.
Will SelfRead
People often ask me why my style is so simple. It is, in fact, deceptively simple, for no two sentences are alike. It is clarity that I am striving to attain, not simplicity. Of course, some people want literature to be difficult and there are writers who like to make their readers toil and sweat. They hope to be taken more seriously that way. I have always tried to achieve a prose that is easy and conversational. And those who think this is simple should try it for themselves.
Ruskin BondRead