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" People think of me as a political writer, but I don't think of myself that way. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Think
People
Myself
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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. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Know
Think
She
" 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'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
" 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
" 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
" Writers write without support. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Writers
Support
Without
" I don't like to see people get kicked around. You have to stand up for them. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
See
People
Like
" 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
" 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 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 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
" 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. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Forget
Easy
Just
" 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. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Speak
Day
Home
" 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 was deeply infected with storytelling from the get go, and I truly love it. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Get
Love
Storytelling
" Books are like chocolate. Can't eat just one. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Just
Eat
Like
" 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
" 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. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
History
Believe
Books
" I'm a theological writer mistaken for a political writer. My theme is grace versus karma. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Theme
Writer
Grace
" 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. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Good
Angry
War
" 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
" I often say poetry was my first love. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
First
Poetry
Love
" 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
" 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
" I am addicted to poetry, but the truth is I cannot pass up a good hard-boiled mystery. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Truth Is
Good
I Am
" 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
Me
Women
Important
" 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 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
" 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