- Father
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
Luis Alberto Urrea Quotes
Most Famous Luis Alberto Urrea Quotes of All Time!
We have created a collection of some of the best luis-alberto-urrea quotes so you can read and share anytime with your friends and family. Share our Top 10 Luis Alberto Urrea Quotes on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
- Last Updated on May 30, 2021
- Long
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
Spanish was my first language. Honestly, I learned to first speak in Spanish, not English, because my poor mother had to go to San Diego every day to work and then come back. And she would come home when I was an infant long after I was asleep.
- Green
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
I had not seen lawns till fifth grade - big green lawns.
- Family
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
I have often said I come from a family of unreliable narrators. I tend to believe their struggles with racism, identity, nationality do dovetail with my motivation to write.
- People
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
Borders are liminal spaces. Anyone worthy of the title of 'writer' is a border writer. We all are border people.
- Karma
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
I'm a theological writer mistaken for a political writer. My theme is grace versus karma.
- Love
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
I often say poetry was my first love.
- Good
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Mom
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
My dad looked like Errol Flynn, and I think my mom thought she was moving into a hacienda, but they lived on a dirt street in Tijuana, a house jammed with relatives, nobody speaking English. She didn't know a word of Spanish. She grew up well and was appalled and humiliated, terrified of anyone ethnic.
- Influence
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
I was torn between the Americanness my mom wanted for me and the Mexicanness my father wanted - they were wrestling for cultural influence over me.
- Living
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
Way back when I was working at the dump, I saw that, even when living among the trash, that some people would decide to choose joy in their lives.
- Life
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
It's the most absurd story. I grew up in the dirt streets of Tijuana, dying of all kinds of diseases - tuberculosis, fevers, all that - and it somehow turned into this charmed life. I don't know exactly how.
- Job
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
Writing went from being a calling to being a job. Business ruined things. It became like making sausages in a sausage factory.
- Hot
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
The French-Cajun culture is similar to mine - they're Catholic, they play accordions, and they eat hot chiles.
- Bed
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- I Am
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
I am addicted to poetry, but the truth is I cannot pass up a good hard-boiled mystery.
- Eat
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
Books are like chocolate. Can't eat just one.
- Like
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
I love books with titles like, 'How Do You Spank a Porcupine?,' 'Arnie, the Darling Starling,' or 'The Bat in My Pocket.'
- Myself
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
People think of me as a political writer, but I don't think of myself that way.
- People
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
In the end, I'm really interested in people and what we do with our short time here on earth. I'm interested in the human soul.
- How
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
It's not like Mexicans have an illegal immigration organ in their body and at 14 kicks off a hormone and shows them how to come to the United States illegally. It's a question of desperation for a vast majority of them.
- Nov 07, 2020
'The Hummingbird's Daughter' took 20 years to write.
- Devil
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
When 'The Hummingbird's Daughter' came out, there was a certain backlash - 'Well, this isn't 'The Devil's Highway.'' That's just the way it goes.
- People
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
I used to work with a relief group that took care of the people in the dump. We took them food and water and medicine and built homes and took them to church services, whatever was needed.
- Love
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
I've been treated beautifully wherever I've gone, and I really think we all want to love each other.
- Hide
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
The concept of a literature of witness - of bearing witness - has embedded in it the need for action. One must not simply hide in the shadows and type; one must also stand in the light.
- Daughter
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
The tone of 'Into the Beautiful North' is really the way I write. 'Hummingbird's Daughter' was the anomaly. It was a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon.
- Good
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
A great Chicano forebear of mine in writing is Rolando Hinojosa-Smith. He was writing good border mysteries for Chicano readers back in the '80s and '90s.
- Good
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
There is beauty in our roots. Sometimes we think our roots are shameful, and people tell you that you're no good or your ancestors are no good or that you come from a neighborhood of no hope and terrible crime. But it's about the beauty of those places, and I carry that with me.
- I Am
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
I am actually a 'Seven Samurai' fan.
- May
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Forget
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Prayer
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
To me, writing is prayer. I pray all the time.
- America
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Important
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
It became really important to me if I was going to write 'Hummingbird's Daughter' to try to do honor to women.
- Humor
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
We're all funny. Humor unites us.
- People
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
When I was doing missionary work when I was younger, which started this obsession of mine with the literature of witness, I was a translator for a missionary group, and I spent years in a Tijuana dump. People were really thrown by the fact that the Mexican poor, many of them pureblood indigenous people, seemed happy.
- Support
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
Writers write without support.
- Dying
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
When I was a little boy in Tijuana, it was wonderland. We left when I was probably four - I was dying of tuberculosis.
- Nov 07, 2020
During grade school, we moved to a white, working-class suburb in San Diego, and there were no Mexicans.
- Family
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
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.'
- Expectations
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
Masculinity is kind of a toxic curse, isn't it? The expectations of it were hard on me.
- God
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Life
- |
- Nov 07, 2020
I came to believe the green fuse that drives spring and summer through the world is essentially a literary energy. That the world was more than a place. Life was more than an event. It was all one thing - and that thing was story.
- Football
- |
- Nov 07, 2020