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" 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

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" People think of me as a political writer, but I don't think of myself that way. "

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

" I don't like being angry all the time; it's not good for me. I have to have serenity or else go to war. "

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

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

" 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. "

" I'm always trying to, using literature, subvert people's responses. "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" During grade school, we moved to a white, working-class suburb in San Diego, and there were no Mexicans. "

" I don't like to see people get kicked around. You have to stand up for them. "

Luis Alberto Urrea

See

People

" With a name like Luis Alberto Urrea, it's political no matter what I do. "

Luis Alberto Urrea

Name

Political

" I was deeply infected with storytelling from the get go, and I truly love it. "

" 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

" 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. "

" To me, writing is prayer. I pray all the time. "

Luis Alberto Urrea

Pray

Prayer

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Borders are liminal spaces. Anyone worthy of the title of 'writer' is a border writer. We all are border people. "

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

" Writing went from being a calling to being a job. Business ruined things. It became like making sausages in a sausage factory. "

" 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. "

" I'm interested in the eternal soul. That's what I write about. "

" 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.' "

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

" 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. "

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

Luis Alberto Urrea

Just

Eat