Magic Realism Authors

"“The beauty of Catholicism,” he had pontificated to his grandson, “is that even if you spent your entire life sinning, you can die moments after repenting and still get into Heaven. So live it up, Fulgencio. Just don’t let death catch you by surprise.”"

"“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.”"

"“If you’re not careful, the blood that you carry inside will turn those dreams that you so love into nightmares.”"

"“Justice is not for sale.”"

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

"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."

"“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.”"

"“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.”"

"“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.”"

"“Without love, we’re dead.”"

"“[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.”"

"“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.”"

"“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.”"

"“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.”"

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

"“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.”"

"“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....”"

"“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.”"

"“[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.”"

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

"As a teacher I realize that what one learns in school doesn't serve for very much at all, that the only thing one can really learn is self understanding and this is something that can't be taught. The law of love is what one really should be learning in school, and what I want to communicate to people is that they should disobey the social rules that do not pertain to them, they should rebel against what is not personally true."

"The only way to find peace is when you are not separated, when you are not fighting, when you part of the whole."

"Tradition is an element that enters into play with destiny, because you are born into a particular family -- Jewish or Islamic or Christian or Mexican -- and your family determines to some extent what you are expected to become. And society is always there attempting to determine the role we will play within it. And these expectations are not always in good relationship with our personal desires. I am always interested in that relationship between outer reality and inner desire, and I think it is important to pay attention to the inner voice, because it is the only way to discover your mission in life, and the only way to develop the strength to break with whatever familial or cultural norms are preventing you from fulfilling your destiny."

"As a very young girl, I understood that the interior activities of the home are as significant as the exterior activities of society."

"I grew up in a modern home, but my grandmother lived across the street in an old house that was built when churches were illegal in Mexico…She had a chapel in the home, right between the kitchen and dining room. The smell of nuts and chilies and garlic got all mixed up with the smells from the chapel, my grandmother's carnations, the liniments and healing herbs."

"Thank God – because what are you going to write about if you don’t struggle as a child? I don’t think that you become creative because you have struggled, no, but creative people are fuelled by anger and passion, and haunted by demons and memories."

"Because she lived under the big umbrella of my grandfather and she didn't have any education - she had three kids, had been abandoned by her husband, had no money - it was a horrible life. The only way she could get attention from her father or anybody else was by being sick. She didn't do it consciously. As a child I felt impotent and guilty because I felt that I couldn't help her in any way."

""What is the question we spend our entire lives asking? Our question is this: Are we loved? I don’t mean by one another. Are we loved by the one who made us? Constantly, we look for evidence. In the gifts we are given—children, good weather, money, a happy marriage perhaps—we find assurance. In contrast, our pains, illnesses, the deaths of those we love, our poverty, our innocent misfortunes—those we take as signs that God has somehow turned away. But, my friends, what exactly is love here? How to define it? Does God’s love have anything at all to do with the lack or plethora of good fortune at work in our lives? Or is God’s love, perhaps, something very different from what we think we know?...If I am loved, it is a merciless and exacting love against which I have no defense. If I am not loved, then I am being pitilessly manipulated by a force I cannot withstand, either, and so it is all the same. I must do what I must do. Go in peace." (p227)"

"I told her she had run an enormous risk rescuing me, and she smiled. It was then I understood that the days of Colonel Garcia and all those like him are numbered, because they have not been able to destroy the spirit of these women. (p487)"

"The Poet’s funeral had turned into the symbolic burial of freedom. (p441)"

"Sorrow eats time. Be patient. Time eats sorrow."

"Whenever he thought he knew the truth it merged into another truth. (p327)"

"The coup gave them a chance to put into practice what they had learned in their barracks: blind obedience, the use of arms, and other skills that soldiers can master once they silence the scruples of their hearts. (p436)"

"She felt that everything was made of glass, as fragile as a sigh... (p430)"

"Getting blown up happened in an instant; getting put together took the rest of your life."

"...and on the date stipulated by law the left calmly came to power. And on that date the right began to stockpile hatred. (p392)"

""Public opinion wouldn’t stand for it,” Gómez replied. “This is a democracy. It’s not a dictatorship and it never will be.” “We always think things like that only happen elsewhere,” said Miguel, “until they happen to us too.” (p367)"

"I really liked Isabelle Allende's House of the Spirits...But I also think that their [her and Garcia Márquez's] sense of indigenous people and the land is very limited. It has been pointed out that Allende uses this sort of mythos, the Indian people, as part of the novel, but they don't really appear in her work as people, as full beings."

"And that was where the whiskey got hold of her. As it has with so many of us, even myself, the liquor sneaked up and grabbed her, got into her mind and talked to her, fooled her into thinking she was thinking for herself when really it was the whiskey thinking whiskey thoughts. (p75)"

""To love another human in all of her splendor and imperfect perfection, it is a magnificent task...tremendous and foolish and human." (p331)"

"The man and the little girl looked at each other, recognizing themselves in the other’s eyes. (p319)"

"Blanca argued that her reading should be monitored because there were certain things that were inappropriate for her age, but her Uncle Jaime felt that people never read what did not interest them and that if it interested them that meant they were sufficiently mature to read it. (p311)"

"That's what the drum is about - it gathers people in and holds them. It looks after them. But like a person, things can go wrong in spite of all the best care. And this drum had its own history and sorrow. (p180)"

"He felt that Christianity, like almost all forms of superstition, made men weaker and more resigned, and that the point was not to await some reward in the sky but to fight for one’s rights on earth. (p255)"

""My son, the Holy Church is on the right, but Jesus Christ was always on the left.” (p182)"

"I come from the so-called Third World," wrote the Chilean novelist and memoirist Isabel Allende after September 11, 2001, a day that also marked the twenty-eighth anniversary of a U.S.-sponsored coup d'état against her uncle, Salvador Allende. Still, she writes, "Until only a short time ago, if someone had asked me where I'm from, I would have answered, without much thought, Nowhere; or, Latin America; or, maybe, In my heart I'm Chilean. Today, however, I say I'm an American, not simply because that's what my passport verifies, or because that word includes all of America from north to south, or because my husband, my son, my grandchildren, most of my friends, my books, and my home are in northern California; but because a terrorist attack destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and starting with that instant, many things have changed. We can't be neutral in moments of crisis...I no longer feel that I am an alien in the United States."

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that. And living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on Earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could. (p274)"

"“This is to assuage our conscience, darling" she would explain to Blanca. "But it doesn't help the poor. They don't need charity; they need justice” (p162)"

"...Captain Longfellow—who, like most Englishmen, was kinder to animals than to people... (p31)"