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
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.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the freedom of expression in Mexican literature, suggesting that writers are no longer constrained by identity politics.
Carlos Fuentes reflects on the evolution of Mexican writing, highlighting the current era where authors can explore diverse themes without being confined to the expectations of expressing a singular Mexican identity. This freedom stems from a strong understanding of what it means to be Mexican, allowing for broader creative expression.
In practice
A writer discussing the growth of contemporary Mexican authors at a literary festival.
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.
Writing is a struggle against silence.
Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.
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.
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.
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.
The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to entertain, to make things up. The art of what I do lies not in research or even recollection but primarily in invention.
Any constraint is part of the skeleton that you build the composition on - including your own incompetence.
Art is the only thing you cannot punch a button for. You must do it the old-fashioned way. Stay up and really burn the midnight oil. There are no compromises.
I can't be alone among fiction writers in regarding the world, so much weirder than anything we could make up, as beating us at our own game or in racking my brains over what could possibly constitute a contribution when novels pale before the newspaper.
Imagine that we are sitting in an ordinary room. Suddenly we are told that there is a corpse behind the door. In an instant the room we are sitting in is completely altered; everything in it has taken on another look; the light, the atmosphere have changed, though they are physically the same. This is because we have changed and the objects are as we conceive them. That is the effect I want to get in my film.
What is the thing that Hollywood demands most? Sincerity. No place in the world will pay such a high price for this admirable trait
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