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

Luis Alberto Urrea

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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

" 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

" Poetry is how I feed the soul, and it's how I fire the furnace of writing. "

Luis Alberto Urrea

" 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

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

Luis Alberto Urrea

" 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

" 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

" The stupidity of militarized fences between two worlds is a metaphor for all the things that divide us as human beings. "

Luis Alberto Urrea

" 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

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

Luis Alberto Urrea

" 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

" 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

" 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. "

Luis Alberto Urrea

" 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

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

Luis Alberto Urrea

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

Luis Alberto Urrea

" 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

" 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

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

Luis Alberto Urrea

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

Luis Alberto Urrea

" 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

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

Luis Alberto Urrea

" 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