“I'm not a Mexican writer, but I think everything that happens in Mexico affects the Mexican writers I know, in their sense of being human and of being Mexican, even if they don't in any explicit way address these issues in their writing.” ThinkingWritingBeing HumanMexicanBeing MeExplicit Author:Francisco Goldman
“I don't ever think about the utility of fiction. I don't believe in it or certainly don't require anybody to consider it. A novel or short story might be useful to a reader in all kinds of ways, many of which no writer would ever foresee, which is a good thing.” ThinkingBelieveKindNovelGood ThingsAll KindsShort StoryUtility Author:Francisco Goldman
“I don't impose political responsibilities on my fiction. The last thing I would ever want to do, for example, is write a novel that would appear to want to tell people what to think about the immigration debate, and I would never write a novel whose sole ambition was to give a "positive" view of immigrants. I'm for open borders, by the way - down with the nation state!” PeopleThinkingGivingWritingPoliticalResponsibilityNovelAmbitionDebateImmigration Author:Francisco Goldman
“I think everything you are, everything that engages you, eventually comes to bear on the novel you write. I think the creative energy in novel writing, obviously, comes from tension. From trying to fuse. From trying to make coherent disparate things that might not at all seem to belong together within a narrative.” ThinkingWritingTryingTogetherEnergyNovelCreativeTension Author:Francisco Goldman
“What I see of the US Presidential elections from down here makes me want to disengage from that particular reality and just hole up and read. It's true. I think if I were living in the US, I would just turn my television and radio off for a year right now, and just read.” ThinkingRealityElectionPresidentialPresidential Election Author:Francisco Goldman
“There's a certain advantage to living in a small country like Guatemala, I think. You don't feel so distant from political reality there. When things happen, they almost seem to happen on a Shakespearian stage with the audience so close they can become actors too. This is partly what Joseph Brodsky meant when he wrote that small countries have big politics.” ThinkingCountryRealityPoliticalAudienceThings Happen Author:Francisco Goldman
“People in the big rich countries are often extremely dismissive of the small countries. They think nothing that happens there is of any interest or that it matters at all, but, at the very least, with that attitude they miss out on some extraordinary stories.” PeopleThinkingCountryInterestAttitudeRichMissingExtraordinary Author:Francisco Goldman
