Quotessence
Home / Authors / Richard Rodriguez
Richard Rodriguez

Richard Rodriguez Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllAmericaThinkingPeopleLanguageWayMexicoKnowsIfsMexicanDiversity

Famous Richard Rodriguez Quotes

“Suddenly the land is haunted by all these dead Indians. There is this new fascination with the Southwest, with places like Santa Fe, New Mexico, where people come down from New York and Boston and dress up as Indians. When I go to Santa Fe, I find real Indians living there, but they are not involved in the earth worship that the American environmentalists are so taken by. Many of these Indians are interested, rather, in becoming Evangelical Christians.”

PeopleRealEarthChristianTakenLandNew YorkBecomingInvolvedWorshipDressesMexicoBostonSantaFascinationEvangelicalEnvironmentalistNew MexicoSanta Fe
Author:Richard Rodriguez
Create image

“What has happened in the last generation is that Tijuana has become a new Third World capital - much to the chagrin of Mexico City, which is more and more aware of how little it controls Tijuana politically and culturally. In addition to whorehouses and discos, Tijuana now has Korean factories and Japanese industrialists and Central American refugees, and a new Mexican bourgeoisie that takes its lessons from cable television.”

WorldLittlesLastsCitiesGenerationsHappenedTelevisionLessonsThirdsFactoriesMexicoRefugeeMexicanCablesKoreanThird WorldBourgeoisieDiscoMexico CityChagrinTijuana
Author:Richard Rodriguez
Create image

“There is San Diego - this retirement village, with its prim petticoat, that doesn't want to get too near the water. San Diego worries about all the turds washing up on the lovely, pristine beaches of La Jolla. San Diego wishes Mexico would have fewer babies. And San Diego, like the rest of America, is growing middle-aged.”

WantAmericaWishWaterWorryGrowingMiddleBabyLovelyBeachVillageRetirementFewerMexicoWashingMiddle AgedPristineSan DiegoTurds
Author:Richard Rodriguez
Create image

“The average age in the U.S. is now thirty-three, whereas Mexico gets younger and younger, retreats deeper and deeper into adolescence. Mexico is fifteen. Mexico is wearing a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt and wandering around Tijuana looking for a job, for a date, for something to put on her face to take care of the acne.”

HardCareAgeJobsFacesThreeRocksAverageDeeperTake CareWanderShirtsThirtyMexicoFifteenAdolescenceRetreatT ShirtCafesHard RockWandering AroundAcneLooking For A JobTijuana
Author:Richard Rodriguez
Create image

“It is not simply that these two cities are perched side by side at the edge of the Pacific; it is that adolescence sits next to middle age, and they don't know how to relate to each other. In a way, these two cities exist in different centuries. San Diego is a post-industrial city talking about settling down, slowing down, building clean industry. Tijuana is a preindustrial city talking about changing, moving forward, growing. Yet they form a single metropolitan area.”

KnowsWayTwoDifferentAgeMovingFormNextSidesCitiesTalkingKnow HowGrowingMiddleCenturyBuildingIndustryAreasCleanEdgesMoving ForwardPostsRelateSettlingAdolescenceSlow DownMiddle AgesPacificSettling DownSlowingSan DiegoMetropolitanTijuana
Author:Richard Rodriguez
Create image

“Maybe the American Dream is too rich for us now in the U.S. Maybe we're losing it because we are not like our Swedish grandmother who came across the plains, hacked down the trees, and took the Spanish words she encountered and made them hers. Now her great-great-grandchildren sit terrified, wondering what to do with all these Mexicans. The American Dream is an impossible affirmation of possibility. And maybe native-born Americans don't have it anymore. Maybe it has run through their fingers.”

MadeDreamRunningBornWonderRichImpossibleTreePossibilityLosingFingersNativeGrandmotherAmerican DreamTerrifiedAffirmationGrandchildrenSwedishHackedGreat Grandchildren
Author:Richard Rodriguez
Create image

“Those people who say that America is finite are some sense right. The environmental movement, for example, has a great wisdom to it: we need to protect, to preserve, to shelter as much as we need to develop. But I think this always has to be juxtaposed against the optimism of old, which is now represented in part by immigrants. I would like to see America achieve a kind of balance between optimism and tragedy, between possibility and skepticism.”

PeopleThinkingNeedsKindAmericaAchieveExampleMovementPossibilityBalanceProtectOptimismTragedyEnvironmentalPreservesImmigrantsShelterSkepticismFiniteGreat Wisdom
Author:Richard Rodriguez
Create image

“America has never had a very wide vocabulary for miscegenation. We say we like diversity, but we don't like the idea that our Hispanic neighbor is going to marry our daughter. America has nothing like the Spanish vocabulary for miscegenation. Mulatto, mestizo, Creole - these Spanish and French terms suggest, by their use, that miscegenation is a fact of life. America has only black and white. In eighteenth-century America, if you had any drop of African blood in you, you were black.”

IfsIdeasFactsUseAmericaBlackTermWhiteBloodCenturyDiversityDaughterWideNeighborBlack And WhiteVocabularyFacts Of LifeHispanicOur DaughterCreoleMiscegenationMulattoes
Author:Richard Rodriguez
Create image

“But lots of emerging racial tensions in California have nothing to do with whites: Filipinos and Samoans are fighting it out in San Francisco high schools. Merced is becoming majority Mexican and Cambodian. They may be fighting in gangs right now, but I bet they are also learning each other's language.”

MaySchoolFightingLanguageBecomingRight NowHigh SchoolMajorityCaliforniaTensionGangMexicanSan FranciscoEmergingFilipinoRacial Tension
Author:Richard Rodriguez
Create image

“Cultures, when they meet, influence one another, whether people like it or not. But Americans don't have any way of describing this secret that has been going on for more than two hundred years. The intermarriage of the Indian and the African in America, for example, has been constant and thorough. Colin Powell tells us in his autobiography that he is Scotch, Irish, African, Indian, and British, but all we hear is that he is African.”

PeopleWayYearsHas BeensTwoAmericaCultureSecretInfluenceExampleHundredConstantBritishIndianAutobiographyDescribingThoroughScotchIntermarriage
Author:Richard Rodriguez
Create image

“The fact that we're all hyphenating our names suggests that we are afraid of being assimilated. I was talking on the BBC recently, and this woman introduced me as being "in favor of assimilation." I said, "I'm not in favor of assimilation." I am no more in favor of assimilation than I am in favor of the Pacific Ocean. Assimilation is not something to oppose or favor - it just happens.”

SaidFactsHappensNamesTalkingOceanFavorsPacificAssimilationPacific Ocean
Author:Richard Rodriguez
Create image

“Mexicans who come to America today end up opposing assimilation. They say they are "holding on to their culture." To them, I say, "If you really wanted to hold on to your culture, you would be in favor of assimilation. You would be fearless about swallowing English and about becoming Americanized. You would be much more positive about the future, and much less afraid. That's what it means to be Mexican.”

IfsMeanEndsWould BeTodayWantedAmericaCultureBecomingFavorsFearlessMexicanHolding OnOpposingAssimilationSwallowingAmerica Today
Author:Richard Rodriguez
Create image

“'m constantly depressed by the Mexican gang members I meet in East L.A. who essentially live their lives inside five or six blocks. They are caught in some tiny ghetto of the mind that limits them to these five blocks because, they say, "I'm Mexican. I live here." And I say, "What do you mean you live here - five blocks? Your granny, your abualita, walked two thousand miles to get here. She violated borders, moved from one language to another, moved from a sixteenth-century village to a twenty-first-century city, and you live within five blocks?"”

MindFirstsMeanTwoLanguageCitiesFiveCenturyThousandLimitsMembersSixTwentiesMovedCaughtEastTinyMilesBlockBordersVillageGangMexicanGhettoThousand MilesGrannyGang Members
Author:Richard Rodriguez
Create image

“Mexico is sex and Canada is mind. There is much about Canada that I find admirable - the treatment of immigrants, for example, particularly those from Central America during the recent civil wars there. But there is confusion too: I know of Croatian Nazis who are subsidized by the Canadian government to maintain their racist culture. There is Canada, trying to sustain diversity without knowing exactly what it's doing.”

KnowsTryingMindWarGovernmentAmericaCultureSexKnowingExampleDiversityConfusionCivil WarCanadaTreatmentRacistImmigrantsMexicoNaziAdmirableCentral AmericaCanadian GovernmentCroatians
Author:Richard Rodriguez
Create image

“If you want to live in Tennessee, God bless you, I wish for you a long life and starry evenings. But that is not where I want to live my life. I want to live my life in Carthage, in Athens. I want to live my life in Rome. I want to live my life in the center of the world. I want to live my life in Los Angeles.”

IfsWorldWantLongWishEveningLos AngelesBlessRomeLiving My LifeLong LifeGod BlessTennesseeAthensGod Bless YouCenter Of The WorldCarthage
Author:Richard Rodriguez
Create image

“The genius of American culture and its integrity comes from fidelity to the light. Plain as day, we say. Happy as the day is long. Early to bed, early to rise. American virtues are daylight virtues: honesty, integrity, plain speech. We say yes when we mean yes and no when we mean no, and all else comes from the evil one. America presumes innocence and even the right to happiness.”

MeanLongLightAmericaCultureEvilVirtueHonestyGeniusIntegrityBedSpeechEthicsInnocenceAmerican CultureFidelityDaylightHonesty IntegrityMoral EthicsYes And No
Author:Richard Rodriguez
Create image

“In the Sacramento of the 1950s, it was as though White simply hadn't had time enough to figure Brown out. It was a busy white time. Brown was like the skinny or fat kids left over after the team captains chose sides. You take the rest — my cue to wander away to the sidelines, to wander away.”

EnoughKidsLeftSidesWhiteTeamFiguresBusyFatsWanderBrownCaptainsSkinnySidelinesSacramentoFat KidTeam Captain
Book:Brown: The Last Discovery of America
Create image

“Though I am alive now, I do not believe an old man's pessimism is nessessarily truer than a young man's optimism simply because it comes after. There are things a young man knows that are true and are not yet in the old man's power to recollect. Spring has its sappy wisdom.”

KnowsMenLifeBelieveYoungAliveSpringOptimismYoung ManOld ManPessimismI Am Alive
Book:Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father
Create image

“Intimacy is not trapped within words. It passes through words. It passes. The truth is that intimates leave the room. Doors close. Faces move away from the window. Time passes. Voices recede into the dark. Death finally quiets the voice. And there is no way to deny it. No way to stand in the crowd, uttering one's family language.”

WayFacesMovingLanguageVoiceDarkRoomsDoorsTruth IsWindowCrowdsDenyIntimacyTrappedTime Passes
Book:Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez
Create image