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" Writers write without support. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Writers
Support
Without
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" We want to ascribe a kind of tragic grimness to people, but people are funny. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Want
Tragic
People
" 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
" 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
" During grade school, we moved to a white, working-class suburb in San Diego, and there were no Mexicans. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Working-Class
White
School
" 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
" I was deeply infected with storytelling from the get go, and I truly love it. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Get
Love
Storytelling
" 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
" I had not seen lawns till fifth grade - big green lawns. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Till
Seen
Big
" 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
Father
Best
Know
" 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
" 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 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 was torn between the Americanness my mom wanted for me and the Mexicanness my father wanted - they were wrestling for cultural influence over me. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Me
Wrestling
Father
" Masculinity is kind of a toxic curse, isn't it? The expectations of it were hard on me. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Expectations
Me
Kind
" 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
" I often say poetry was my first love. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
First
Poetry
Love
" I'm a theological writer mistaken for a political writer. My theme is grace versus karma. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Theme
Writer
Grace
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Books are like chocolate. Can't eat just one. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Just
Eat
Like
" 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
" 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
" People think of me as a political writer, but I don't think of myself that way. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Think
People
Myself
" I'm interested in the eternal soul. That's what I write about. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Soul
Interested
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. "
Luis Alberto Urrea
Speak
Day
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