The possibility of being as free with the camera as we are with the pen is a fantastic prospect for the creative life of the 21st century.
Carlos FuentesRead
For me, life without literature is inconceivable. I think that Don Quixote in a physical sense never existed, but Don Quixote exists more than anybody who existed in 1605. Much more. There's nobody who can compete with Don Quixote or with Hamlet. So in the end we have the reality of the book as the reality of the world and the reality of history.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Literature is a fundamental part of life, capturing truths that surpass historical existence.
Carlos Fuentes emphasizes the importance of literature in our lives, arguing that characters like Don Quixote and Hamlet embody a deeper reality that transcends their fictional origins. They represent universal truths and insights that resonate more profoundly than historical figures, suggesting that the influence of literature shapes our understanding of existence and reality itself.
Themes
LiteratureDon QuixoteHamletRealityCharacters
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of storytelling in education.
More from Carlos Fuentes
All quotes →Writing is a struggle against silence.
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Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.
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One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It's one of the oldest urges in mankind. It's a way of stalling death.
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No, it's not that they're bad. It's that they're obliged to pretend they're good. They've been brought up to deceive and be cunning, to protect themselves from our society. I don't want to be like that.
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You have an absolute freedom in Mexican writing today in which you don't necessarily have to deal with the Mexican identity. You know why? Because we have an identity... We know who we are. We know what it means to be a Mexican.
Carlos FuentesRead
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There is the myth that writing books for children is easier than writing books for grownups, whereas we know that truly great books for children are works of genius, whether it's 'Alice in Wonderland' or the 'Gruffalo' or 'Northern Lights.' When it's a great book, it's a great book, whether it's for children or not.
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The things that the novel does not say are necessarily more numerous than those it does say and only a special halo around what is written can give the illusion that you are reading also what is not written.
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English writing tends to fall into two categories - the big, baggy epic novel or the fairly controlled, tidy novel. For a long time, I was a fan of the big, baggy novel, but there's definitely an advantage to having a little bit more control.
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Until the 20th century it was generally assumed that a writer had said what he had to say in his works.
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Fiction is a lie that is told in the service of truth.
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When we're done with it, we may find—if it's a good novel—that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having meet a new face, crossed a street we've never crossed before.
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