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" I came to believe the green fuse that drives spring and summer through the world is essentially a literary energy. That the world was more than a place. Life was more than an event. It was all one thing - and that thing was story. "

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" I missed the Wilco phenom while busy obsessing over rock en Espanol. So imagine my surprise when I found myself at O'Hare getting on a plane with my Chi-town homeboy, Jeff Tweedy. I loved the guy right away and loved his family. How odd to know somebody before you listen to them. I don't know if that's bad or good. "

Luis Alberto Urrea

Busy

Surprise

Myself

" I often say poetry was my first love. "

" The situation was kind of complicated in that my mother didn't speak Spanish. My father spoke English, you know, as best he could. "

" We want to ascribe a kind of tragic grimness to people, but people are funny. "

" A great Chicano forebear of mine in writing is Rolando Hinojosa-Smith. He was writing good border mysteries for Chicano readers back in the '80s and '90s. "

" It's almost easy for me to write about a magnificent tropical village with orchids and dragonflies. That's intoxicating, but the United States is magical, too. We just forget this. "

" I'm a theological writer mistaken for a political writer. My theme is grace versus karma. "

" My dad looked like Errol Flynn, and I think my mom thought she was moving into a hacienda, but they lived on a dirt street in Tijuana, a house jammed with relatives, nobody speaking English. She didn't know a word of Spanish. She grew up well and was appalled and humiliated, terrified of anyone ethnic. "

" Writers write without support. "

" I used to work with a relief group that took care of the people in the dump. We took them food and water and medicine and built homes and took them to church services, whatever was needed. "

" It became really important to me if I was going to write 'Hummingbird's Daughter' to try to do honor to women. "

Luis Alberto Urrea

Women

Important

" We're all funny. Humor unites us. "

" I am actually a 'Seven Samurai' fan. "

" I had not seen lawns till fifth grade - big green lawns. "

" Masculinity is kind of a toxic curse, isn't it? The expectations of it were hard on me. "

Luis Alberto Urrea

Expectations

Kind

" I love books with titles like, 'How Do You Spank a Porcupine?,' 'Arnie, the Darling Starling,' or 'The Bat in My Pocket.' "

Luis Alberto Urrea

Titles

Books

" I believe God is a poet; every religion in our history was made of poems and songs, and not a few of them had books attached. "

" I was torn between the Americanness my mom wanted for me and the Mexicanness my father wanted - they were wrestling for cultural influence over me. "

Luis Alberto Urrea

Wrestling

Father

" I saw 'The War Wagon' with John Wayne and Kirk Douglas, but it was dubbed into German. And it had Japanese subtitles and then this little strip with some Spanish words, and I've never forgotten that weird image. It was so magical and funky. "

" I read most often in bed as part of my attempted sleep ritual. But I spend a lot of time reading on planes and in hotels, too. "

" The stupidity of militarized fences between two worlds is a metaphor for all the things that divide us as human beings. "

Luis Alberto Urrea

Two

Divide

" Books are like chocolate. Can't eat just one. "

Luis Alberto Urrea

Just

Eat

" The French-Cajun culture is similar to mine - they're Catholic, they play accordions, and they eat hot chiles. "

" There is beauty in our roots. Sometimes we think our roots are shameful, and people tell you that you're no good or your ancestors are no good or that you come from a neighborhood of no hope and terrible crime. But it's about the beauty of those places, and I carry that with me. "

" It's the most absurd story. I grew up in the dirt streets of Tijuana, dying of all kinds of diseases - tuberculosis, fevers, all that - and it somehow turned into this charmed life. I don't know exactly how. "

" Way back when I was working at the dump, I saw that, even when living among the trash, that some people would decide to choose joy in their lives. "

" When I was a little boy in Tijuana, it was wonderland. We left when I was probably four - I was dying of tuberculosis. "

" In the end, I'm really interested in people and what we do with our short time here on earth. I'm interested in the human soul. "

" Poetry is how I feed the soul, and it's how I fire the furnace of writing. "

" I used to approach writing like a football game. If I went out there and aggressively saw more, I'd know more, and I'd capture more, and I'd write better. Hut, hut, hut: First down and haiku! "