Luis Alberto Urrea Quotes
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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.
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To me, writing is prayer. I pray all the time.
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I am actually a 'Seven Samurai' fan.
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When I was a little boy in Tijuana, it was wonderland. We left when I was probably four - I was dying of tuberculosis.
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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.
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We're all funny. Humor unites us.
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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.'
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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!
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I am addicted to poetry, but the truth is I cannot pass up a good hard-boiled mystery.
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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.
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People think of me as a political writer, but I don't think of myself that way.
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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.
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I had not seen lawns till fifth grade - big green lawns.
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With a name like Luis Alberto Urrea, it's political no matter what I do.
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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.
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We want to ascribe a kind of tragic grimness to people, but people are funny.
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I'm always trying to, using literature, subvert people's responses.
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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.
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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.
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It became really important to me if I was going to write 'Hummingbird's Daughter' to try to do honor to women.
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'The Hummingbird's Daughter' took 20 years to write.
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Poetry is how I feed the soul, and it's how I fire the furnace of writing.
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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.
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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.