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
I always felt a little worm inside me: 'Now you need to write a novel with a woman protagonist.'
Interpretation
The quote reflects the internal urging of a writer to pursue their creative aspirations, particularly in representing diverse narratives.
In this quote, Carlos Fuentes expresses a personal struggle and motivation as a writer, feeling an internal compulsion to create a novel featuring a woman as the central character. This underscores the importance of representation in literature and highlights how writers often feel driven to explore voices and experiences that resonate differently from their own.
In practice
In a writing workshop, a participant could use this quote to inspire discussions on female representation in literature.
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.
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.
America is a nation of liars, and for that reason science fiction has a special claim to be our national literature, as the art form best adapted to telling the lies we like to hear and to pretend we believe.
Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.
As soon as histories are properly told there is no more need of romances.
You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly felt that the women are oppressed, but power tends to organise itself in a pyramid. I could pick a male narrator from somewhere in that pyramid. It would interesting.
You hear all this whining going on, "Where are our great writers?" The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?
It seems to me that good novels celebrate the mystery in ordinary life, and summing it all up in psychological terms strips the mystery away
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