Novelists From The United States

"“Standing in that same hut, all these years later, he fastened a bolo tie around his neck. He threw a black western jacket over his shoulders in one compact motion. He secured his gun in its shoulder holster. And he straightened his black Stetson with one hand while he combed his mustache with the other. He didn’t need a looking glass to tell him how he looked. It was high noon and time to go to the funeral. To meet Carolina once again. He kissed the ghost of his grandfather playing solitaire at the table. He plucked a single white rose that had sprung from the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe on the adobe wall. And he ducked into the blasting sun.”"

"“Justice is not for sale.”"

"Parting ways in the plaza, Solitario sat tall in his saddle surveying the changing cityscape. A ball of tumbleweeds rolled aimlessly across the deserted plaza, drifts of dead leaves chasing after it, rustling in the incessant wind. He squinted at the cathedral from beneath his broad sombrero. He saw cracks growing in it with every passing moment. Yes, we will build wells, he thought in response to Elias’ question. The water may keep us alive, but it will no longer protect us from our neighbor to the north. Nobody had mentioned it openly yet, but surely others were thinking about it just as he was. With the river rerouted south, they were no longer in Mexico. Their fate rested not on La Virgen’s apparition, but in America’s hands."

"“Without love, we’re dead.”"

"“I need your help to find out who killed me.”"

"“You don’t do the right thing because it’s easy. You do it because it is right.”"

"“She remembered her father’s words one day as they sat alone in the drugstore. He had said, waving his arms in a grand gesture, ‘It took me years to figure out that what truly heals is not all these drugs and medicines. No, no señorita. Only love can heal. The love of between two people. The love of family and home. The love you hear in a song or see in a painting or design. El amor vive eterno.’ Love lives eternal.”"

"“This place is too pure for the Church. No, let the Church own the giant basilicas and ornate cathedrals. Let the Church own altars encrusted with gold and chambers draped in velvet. This place is for God and His creatures...for you and for me. This patch of salt will be here still after we’ve all expired, and after the church bells have tumbled to the ground, and after the towers have crumbled and washed out to sea. And even when the sun is silent and nothing but a ball of frozen, burnt-out gas, we’ll roam these flowing wisps of grass....”"

"“Someone drew a line in the sand, and we crossed back and forth until it disappeared.”"

"“They felt as if they were two glasses of water being poured into one larger container. Swirling and settling in the darkness.”"

"“Discrimination is evil, but evil does not discriminate.”"

"“While I can bear to lose love, I cannot bear to lose honor.”"

"“If it’s a good idea, you just can’t give up on it, and eventually other people will recognize that it’s a good idea.”"

"“When you’re a creative person the ideas come to you…it’s learning how to discern between the ideas I have that are just fun and fanciful but will never go anywhere, and the ideas that I have that might appeal to others.”"

"“There’s so much competition out there for people’s time, and attention, and dollars. So whether it’s as a business, or whether it’s as a writer who writes a book, if what you’re offering is unique, it’s going to eventually stand out to people who are looking for that and you’re going to connect with your audience.”"

"“[D]on’t get angry, don’t lose your temper, be patient, and try to see the other person’s perspective, try to find a positive way through the challenge.”"

"“[W]e can have progress together, but we have to acknowledge the wrongs of the past and we have to work hard to make things better together.”"

"“In the case of Valley of Shadows, I sort of imagine, could the situation have been different had there been more people of color in positions of power? So it kind of turns the Western on its head by having a Mexican American sheriff be the person that’s trying to solve these crimes and bring justice to his town. … And by doing that, I wanted to create a story where the people that have often been marginalized in the telling of these histories have an opportunity to reclaim their place and their role in history.”"

"“Books can build bridges between worlds. When we travel across those bridges and walk in others’ shoes, our sense of empathy grows. Books are bridges that help us cross borders, bringing us closer together as human beings.”"

"“The ranches and their history at the crux of the U.S.-Mexico War play a palpable role in my novels. The ranches have personalities of their own. Caja Pinta is grand and majestic, a wide-open and spiritual place that connects its inhabitants to nature and to whatever lies beyond this material world. Some might call it magic. Others might call it God. Regardless, it is a place of boundless possibility. El Dos de Copas is small, scrappy and defiant. It is literally the lowest card in the Spanish deck of playing cards. But it keeps playing. It never gives up. It is a place of beleaguered hope.”"

"“Borders are a motif in my writing. I was born and raised on the border, and my writing always takes me back there. They say you can take a person out of the border but you can't take the border out of a person. That saying definitely applies to me. Growing up, the border was an invisible line my family and I crossed every day. Because of that, I see borders as porous membranes through which people, animals, goods, services, and the environment must continuously traverse and transmit back and forth.”"

"“If we can acknowledge the failures of the past alongside its squandered potential, we can also remember and apply our insights and learnings to our present. It is a way we can envision becoming a better people, capable as a nation of emerging from the shadows of our own creation to fulfill the promise of liberty and justice for all.”"

"“When it comes to borders I see bridges instead of walls. I see beginnings instead of endings. I see an opportunity for people to come together and build something constructively and collaboratively.”"

"“When we understand our histories and we can process the traumas that might have been passed down through the generations, we can better face these issues and also begin to heal as individuals and families. And, if you're a writer or an artist, you might find yourself with a life-changing project on your hands that is both enlightening and empowering.”"

"“The idea for the curse fit perfectly into my passion for magical realism, but it actually stems from a family legend that indeed the men in my family were cursed. Fortunately, for me, I believe it to be a very colorful – if symbolic – fiction, a more palatable way of explaining our human flaws and failures, our past inability to overcome the burdens of our own histories, social barriers, and bad habits.”"

"“We can’t forget our past. We must be vigilant of history’s injustices and atrocities. No matter what stone we turn, there is a story to be found. Sometimes it lies in plain sight on the surface. Other times it is hidden deep underground. And, more often than not, the architects of a place’s history have used the stone as a foundation upon which they’ve built a museum of illusions, an image of what they would like the truth to be, and how they would choose to see themselves—but also a structure that shadows and obfuscates the truth, leaving millions in the dark about their own proud histories.”"

"“I thought it would be fascinating to tell a story from the perspective of a Mexican-American lawman and an Apache healer. These characters come from communities that were facing tremendous hardships and persecution. Yet, they often fought for justice, stood up for their people, and even helped diverse communities survive at times when people had to band together – despite their differences – to overcome life-threatening situations. There are many untold stories of unsung heroes throughout the history of the Southwest. My hope is to help those forgotten people – that often gave their lives for their families and communities – attain a visible presence, an audible voice, and their respectful place in the modern American narrative.”"

"“As a native Texan, I was raised on the refrain of remembrance.”"

"“In a way, diving into that Western and horror aspect of it, it felt like it freed me. It freed me up to have more fun with it in a way, maybe because I wasn’t taking myself or my writing as seriously and I was just having fun within those genres. I found it liberating. It’s weird to say, because you’re putting some constraints around yourself. But then within those constraints, you just opened up this universe within which I could have a lot of fun.”"

"“If we can see into each other’s worlds, we can find common ground and appreciation and that can lead to good things: like lasting relationships, collaboration, love, and healing.”"

"“What is a revolutionary…if not the architect of a new way of life?”"

"charity is beyond reason, and that God can be known through charity."

"One result of the stimulation of your intellectual life that takes place in college is usually a shrinking of the imaginative life. This sounds like a paradox, but I have often found it to be true."

"About the only way we know whether we believe or not is by what we do"

"Conviction without experience makes for harshness. (1955)"

"I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both. (1956)"

"It is hard to make your adversaries real people unless you recognize yourself in them - in which case, if you don't watch out, they cease to be adversaries. (1956)"

"All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful. (1958)"

"The short story writer particularly has to learn to read life in a way that includes the most possibilities--like the medieval commentators on scripture, who found three kinds of meaning in the literal level of the sacred text. If you see things in depth, you will be more liable to write them that way. (1959)"

"I don't think you should write something as long as a novel around anything that is not of the gravest concern to you and everybody else and for me this is always the conflict between an attraction for the Holy and the disbelief in it that we breathe in with the air of the times. (1959)"

"The novel is an art form and when you use it for anything other than art, you pervert it....If you manage to use it successfully for social, religious, or other purposes, it is because you make it art first. (1956)"

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally. (1955)"

"Faith is what you have in the absence of knowledge. The reason this clash doesn't bother me any longer is because I have got, over the years, a sense of the immense sweep of creation, of the evolutionary process in everything, of how incomprehensible God must necessarily be to be the God of heaven and earth. You can't fit the Almighty into your intellectual categories. I might suggest that you look into some of the works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (The Phenomenom of Man et al.). He was a paleontologist-helped to discover Peking man-and also a man of God. I don't suggest you go to him for answers but for different questions, for that stretching of the imagination that you need to make you a sceptic in the face of much that you are learning, much of which is new and shocking but which when boiled down becomes less so and takes its place in the general scheme of things."

"If you want your faith, you have to work for it. It is a gift, but for very few is it a gift given without any demand for equal time devoted to its cultivation. For every book you read that is anti-Christian, make it your business to read one that presents the other side of the picture; if one isn't satisfactory read others. Don't think that you I have to abandon reason to be a Christian. A book that might help you is The Unity of Philosophical Experience by Etienne Gilson. Another is Newman's The Grammar of Assent. To find out about faith, you have to go to the people who have it and you have to go to the most intelligent ones"

"There may never be anything new to say, but there is always a new way to say it, and since, in art, the way of saying a thing becomes a part of what is said, every work of art is unique and requires fresh attention."

"Mr. Head awakened to discover that the room was full of moonlight. He sat up and stared at the floor boards-the color of silver-and then at the ticking on his pillow, which might have been brocade, and after a second, he saw half of the moon five feet away in his shaving mirror, paused as if it were waiting for his permission to enter. It rolled forward and cast a dignifying light on everything. The straight chair against the wall looked stiff and attentive as if it were awaiting an order and Mr. Head's trousers, hanging to the back of it, had an almost noble air, like the garment some great man had just flung to his servant; but the face on the moon was a grave one. It gazed across the room and out the window where it floated over the horse stall and appeared to contemplate itself with the look of a young man who sees his old age before him. (beginning of "The Artificial Nigger")"

"Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't write fiction. It isn't grand enough for you."

"The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where the human perception begins. He appeals through the senses, and you cannot appeal through the senses with abstractions."

"I believe that the basic experience of everyone is the experience of human limitation. ("The Teaching of Literature")"

"The main concern of the fiction writer is with mystery as it is incarnated in real life. ("Catholic Novelists and their Readers")"