Quote of the Week

I walk beneath your pens, and am not what I
truly am, but what you’d prefer to imagine me.
--Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Quote of the Week

It is still relatively easier for Hollywood filmmakers to deal with someone suffering from schizophrenia than to deal with someone “suffering” from being Hispanic.
--Migdia Chinea-Varela

Quote of the Week

If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; but if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.
--Don Marquis

Quote of the Week

The one thing rich Americans think they know about the poor is what the poor most urgently need (which never turns out to be money).
--Richard Rodriguez, Brown: The Last Discovery of America

Quote of the Week

We find comfort among those who agree with us -- growth among those who don't.
--Frank A. Clark

Quote of the Week

Write from the gut and soul. Spill it. Write from las alturas and from hoyos (avoid cheap, italicized, affected use of Spanish words). Don't offer excuses, explanations, apologies, apologias (the Latin). Remember Danny Santiago? His theme, his gimmick and hook, was being Chicano. Explaining, i.e., apologia lit. In other words, don't write for Them. Don't respond to their issues (if they ask about the gang problems in your community, ask them what they're doing about their biker and pedophile problems). Try to please God or the Virgin and not others (well, Others). But privately. As in silent prayer. They know you are flesh, know your tears of joy and pain. You will quit your day job; if you're a writer, you'll be fired often enough, anyway. If you want to be The Leader of the People, if you want to be a Saint, if you want to be The Guru, please don't pretend to be first of all a writer. Unless you're dead.
--Dagoberto Gilb, “Notes on Lit from the Americas”

Quote of the Week

Mexico is the only Spanish word I know. But it’s the best word.
--Morrissey

Quotes of the Week

Edward Abbey
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Amanda
Jean Arthur
Isaac Asimov
Bruce Bawer
Kristen Bell
Ray Bradbury
Stephen Browne
Stephen Browne
William F. Buckley
Charles Bukowski
Octavia Butler
Thomas Cahill
Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Mariah Carey
Anders Carlson-Wee
Cato the Elder
Charisma Carpenter
Miguel de Cervantes
Anton Chekhov
G. K. Chesterton
Migdia Chinea-Varela
Cicero
Frank A. Clark
Colette
Brian Copeland
Charlie Daniels
Dorothy Day
Steven De Castro
Guillermo del Toro
Samuel R. Delaney
Cameron Diaz
Junot Díaz
Junot Díaz
Junot Díaz
Walt Disney
Ross Douthat
David Drake
W. E. B. Du Bois
Will Durant
Will Durant
Will and Ariel Durant
Will and Ariel Durant
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Barbara Ehrenreich
Elenamary
Dennis Etchison
Rachel Held Evans
Enrique Fernandez
Enrique Fernandez
Enrique Fernandez
Felipe Fernández-Armesto
Gustave Flaubert
Daniel J. Flynn
Charles Fort
Benjamin Franklin
George MacDonald Fraser
Ernesto Galarza
Ray Garton
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Tess Gerritsen
Edward Gibbon
André Gide
André Gide
Dagoberto Gilb
Dagoberto Gilb
Manuel C. Gonzales
Andrew M. Greeley
Andrew M. Greeley
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Merle Haggard
Mary Harron
Salma Hayek
Patricia Heaton
Ernest Hemingway
Eric Hoffer
Eric Hoffer
Eric Hoffer
Ishiro Honda
Sarah A. Hoyt
Robert J. Hutchinson
Henrik Ibsen
Washington Irving
Gary Jennings
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Pico Iyer
Robert D. Kaplan
Casey Kasem
Joan Kelly
Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen King
Dean Koontz
Irving Kristol
R. A. Lafferty
Luke
Alison Lurie
Don Marquis
W. Somerset Maugham
Herman Melville
H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
Tom Miller
Mira
Mira
Ed Morales
St. Thomas More
Rita Moreno
Morrissey
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Debbie Nathan
Ruben Navarrette, Jr.
Ruben Navarrete, Jr.
William Nericcio
William Nericcio
William Nericcio
Friedrich Nietzsche
Flannery O'Connor
Flannery O'Connor
Sheila O'Malley
George Orwell
Dorothy Parker
Simon Pegg
Michael Phelps
Pindar
Leonard Pitt
Leonard Pitt
Marco Portales
Vincent Price
Molly Ringwald
Chris Rock
Chris Rock
Michelle Rodriguez
Richard Rodriguez
Richard Rodriguez
Robert Rodriguez
Matt Ruff
Carl Sagan
Dan Savage
Matt Zoller Seitz
Ben Shapiro
Lionel Shriver
Ali Smith
Lynn Snowden
Bruce Springsteen
Ilan Stavans
Terence
Liz Torres
Mark Twain
Luis Alberto Urrea
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Lupe Vélez
Sarah Vowell
Sarah Vowell
Scott Walker
Tim Ward
Rebecca West
George F. Will
Esther Williams
William Carlos Williams
Robert Anton Wilson
Michelle Wolf
Zeuxis

Quote of the Week

Anyone can do anything they want if they really want to.
--Michael Phelps

Quote of the Week

I've never seen Mi Familia. I hear it's good. But I just wasn't interested in seeing it because it was such a specific type of family, it didn't relate to me or mine in particular. I don't feel like watching movies like those. They feel like work, like, "Oh, I have to watch it because I'm Latin." That's why I know a lot of that stuff won't be successful, because it feels like I have to watch that. You feel like you're on assignment to see them.
--Robert Rodriguez, in Charles Ramírez Berg's Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, Resistance

Quote of the Week

I'm a writer. I write not only for a living, I write because I'm a writer.
--Gary Jennings

Quote of the Week

The way I like to put it is, if religion is a crutch, then what do you call someone who goes around kicking crutches out from under people? A fearless seeker of the Truth or a bloody sadist?
--Stephen Browne, "The Hot Button Issue," Rants and Raves, September 22, 2006

Quote of the Week

We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.
--W. Somerset Maugham

Quote of the Week

Omnes mundum facimus. (We all make the world.)
--Matt Ruff, Bad Monkeys

Quote of the Week

Labels, when used properly and fairly can be tools of enpowerment; labels, when used improperly and unfairly, can be tools of marginalization. Let me repeat that. Labels can be used to enpower people, or they can be used to marginalize people.
--Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, “Misunderstood...again,” La Queen Sucia, July 5, 2007

Quote of the Week

Once you accept the idea that the representation of violence is in itself harmful to society, much of the finest world cinema would be banned, from Eisenstein to Kurosawa to Kubrick and Polanski to Coppola and Scorsese. Most genre films would have to go too: film noir, horror, gangster films, Westerns. This form of censorship, taken to its logical conclusion, clearly means the end of art. However, it does have a point, because no matter how moral or ironic or satirical a filmmaker might think a work is, he or she can have no control over how a member of the audience will receive it. No sane person could watch Taxi Driver and decide that it was a good idea to shoot the president -- but an insane person did. And who is to say that your audience will always consist of the sane?
--Mary Harron, director of American Psycho

Quote of the Week

Of mixed ancestry, I felt from earliest childhood that America was the only home I could ever possibly call my own. I felt that it was expressedly founded for me, personally, and that it must be my first business in life to possess it.
--William Carlos Williams

Quote of the Week

There's so many Mexicans!
--Salma Hayek, about the Oscar nominations

Quote of the Week

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
--André Gide

Quote of the Week

From Octavia Butler's essay “Positive Obsession,” originally published in a 1989 issue of Essence under the title “Birth of a Writer”:

But still I'm asked, what good is science fiction to Black people?

What good is any form of literature to Black people?

What good is science fiction's thinking about the present, the future, and the past?

What good is its tendency to warn or to consider alternative ways of thinking and doing? What good is its examination of the possible effects of science and technology, or social organization and political direction? At its best, science fiction stimulates imagination and creativity. It gets reader and writer off the beaten track, off the narrow, narrow footpath of what “everyone” is saying, doing, thinking -- whoever “everyone” happens to be this year.

And what good is all this to Black people?

My comment:

Of course, the point Ms. Butler makes about science fiction in this quote doesn't apply just to Black people.

One can very well make similar comments about the importance of science fiction to white people. Or Hispanics. Or Asians. Or gays. The list is endless.

I like to think that all humans -- and no doubt some day, all non-humans as well -- have something to learn from the science fiction genre.

Otherwise I wouldn't be so interested in it.