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" 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. "

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" 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

" 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. "

" 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

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

" Spanish was my first language. Honestly, I learned to first speak in Spanish, not English, because my poor mother had to go to San Diego every day to work and then come back. And she would come home when I was an infant long after I was asleep. "

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

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

Luis Alberto Urrea

Pray

Prayer

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

" I often say poetry was my first love. "

" 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 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! "

" Writers write without support. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

Luis Alberto Urrea

Just

Eat

" I am addicted to poetry, but the truth is I cannot pass up a good hard-boiled mystery. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "