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" 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
Like
Books
Related Quotes:
" I've been told not to tour down in Mexico. I am too well-known now. The kidnappers may think that my publisher will pay a ransom. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Now
Think
Will
" 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. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Place
Energy
Green
" Writers write without support. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Writers
Support
Without
" The situation was kind of complicated in that my mother didn't speak Spanish. My father spoke English, you know, as best he could. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Father
Best
Know
" I often say poetry was my first love. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
First
Poetry
Love
" 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. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Know
Think
She
" People think of me as a political writer, but I don't think of myself that way. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Think
People
Myself
" 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. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Streets
Dirt
Dying
" Masculinity is kind of a toxic curse, isn't it? The expectations of it were hard on me. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Expectations
Me
Kind
" The concept of a literature of witness - of bearing witness - has embedded in it the need for action. One must not simply hide in the shadows and type; one must also stand in the light. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Hide
Stand
Light
" 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
Me
Wrestling
Father
" I've been treated beautifully wherever I've gone, and I really think we all want to love each other. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Gone
Think
Want
" I'm always fascinated by the disjunct between what's really happening on the ground and the propaganda machine that feeds America alarmist news about immigration. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Always
America
Immigration
" 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'm always trying to, using literature, subvert people's responses. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Trying
People
Always
" Books are like chocolate. Can't eat just one. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Just
Eat
Like
" I'm interested in the eternal soul. That's what I write about. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Soul
Interested
About
" Borders are liminal spaces. Anyone worthy of the title of 'writer' is a border writer. We all are border people. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Worthy
Borders
People
" A lot of our family was undocumented. My mom and dad were both super conservative. My dad had a green card; my mom was an Eisenhower Republican who did not approve of all the 'illegal people.' "
Luis Alberto Urrea
People
Mom
Republican
" I'm a theological writer mistaken for a political writer. My theme is grace versus karma. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Theme
Writer
Grace
" 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. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Roots
Beauty
Good
" 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. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Water
Food
Church
" Many of us writers tour like a literary Bachman Turner Overdrive. We ain't pretty, but we're on the road. Many of us wish we were rock stars anyway. For my part, I live in my iPod. The musicians there are my constant companions on the road. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Stars
Rock
Live
" 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
Us
Divide
" 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! "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Writing
Better
Football
" Writing went from being a calling to being a job. Business ruined things. It became like making sausages in a sausage factory. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Things
Job
Writing
" 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. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Weird
War
Words
" It's not like Mexicans have an illegal immigration organ in their body and at 14 kicks off a hormone and shows them how to come to the United States illegally. It's a question of desperation for a vast majority of them. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Question
Immigration
Body
" When I was doing missionary work when I was younger, which started this obsession of mine with the literature of witness, I was a translator for a missionary group, and I spent years in a Tijuana dump. People were really thrown by the fact that the Mexican poor, many of them pureblood indigenous people, seemed happy. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Happy
Indigenous People
Work
" I am actually a 'Seven Samurai' fan. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Fan
Actually
I Am