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" 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
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" 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
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Job
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" 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
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" 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
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Immigration
" 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
" Borders are liminal spaces. Anyone worthy of the title of 'writer' is a border writer. We all are border people. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
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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
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Football
" I am actually a 'Seven Samurai' fan. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
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Actually
I Am
" 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 had not seen lawns till fifth grade - big green lawns. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Till
Seen
Big
" 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 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
" I'm interested in the eternal soul. That's what I write about. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Soul
Interested
About
" 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. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Soul
End
Earth
" A great Chicano forebear of mine in writing is Rolando Hinojosa-Smith. He was writing good border mysteries for Chicano readers back in the '80s and '90s. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Back
Mine
Great
" 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 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
" 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'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 trying to, using literature, subvert people's responses. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Trying
People
Always
" 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
" 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 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
" To me, writing is prayer. I pray all the time. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Pray
Me
Prayer
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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 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 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