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" 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. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Hotels
Bed
Most
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" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" I am actually a 'Seven Samurai' fan. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Fan
Actually
I Am
" When I was a little boy in Tijuana, it was wonderland. We left when I was probably four - I was dying of tuberculosis. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Left
Little
Four
" 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. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Back
Way
People
" 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
" 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
" To me, writing is prayer. I pray all the time. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Pray
Me
Prayer
" We're all funny. Humor unites us. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Unites
Humor
Funny
" The tone of 'Into the Beautiful North' is really the way I write. 'Hummingbird's Daughter' was the anomaly. It was a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Daughter
Way
Write
" The French-Cajun culture is similar to mine - they're Catholic, they play accordions, and they eat hot chiles. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Hot
Play
Mine
" 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
" 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
" I was deeply infected with storytelling from the get go, and I truly love it. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Get
Love
Storytelling
" 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'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
" During grade school, we moved to a white, working-class suburb in San Diego, and there were no Mexicans. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Working-Class
White
School
" 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 have often said I come from a family of unreliable narrators. I tend to believe their struggles with racism, identity, nationality do dovetail with my motivation to write. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Motivation
Identity
Family
" Writers write without support. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Writers
Support
Without
" When 'The Hummingbird's Daughter' came out, there was a certain backlash - 'Well, this isn't 'The Devil's Highway.'' That's just the way it goes. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Well
Out
Daughter
" Books are like chocolate. Can't eat just one. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Just
Eat
Like
" 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 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