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Quote by Antonio Porchia

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Antonio Porchia
Antonio Porchia

Antonio Porchia, born on November 13, 1885, was an Argentine poet whose work is renowned for its unique style and profound philosophy. He had a significant impact on Latin American literature. more

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“Protect your Territory; your dreams, goals, interests, family, friends, everything that in some way have become your essence, protect and nurture it through the good and the bad times. Give no one the power to decide who or what's in or out. Make your territory yours. Mark it in linnings of brimming coals if you may. If it's your own place of uncompromised peace and happiness, If it's your place of growth, own that shit, and watch everyone rest with their opinions.”

“Border crossing' is a recurrent theme in all aspects of my work -- editing, writing, and painting. I'm interested in the various ways artists not only cross borders but also subvert them. In mythology, the old Trickster figure Coyote is a champion border crosser, mischievously dashing from the land of the living to the land of the dead, from the wilderness world of magic to the human world. He tears things down so they can be made anew. He's a rascal, but also a culture hero, dancing on borders, ignoring the rules, as many of our most innovative artists do. I'm particularly drawn to art that crosses the borders critics have erected between 'high art' and 'popular culture,' between 'mainstream' and 'genre,' or between one genre and another -- I love that moment of passage between the two; that place on the border where two worlds meet and energize each other, where Coyote enters and shakes things up. But I still have a great love for traditional fantasy, for Imaginary World, center-of-the-genre stories. I'm still excited by series books and trilogies if they're well written and use mythic tropes in interesting ways.”

“The border remains a fluid, mutating, stubbornly troubling, enthusiastically lethal region. Perhaps it’s not a region at all. Maybe it’s just an idea nobody can agree on. A conversation that never ends, even when it becomes an argument and all participants kick over the table and spill their drinks and stomp out of the room. I was born there.”

“This is the moment of Lydia's crossing. Here at the back of this cave somewhere in the Tumacacori Mountains, Lydia sheds the violent skin of everything that's happened to her. It rolls down from her tingling scalp off the mantle of her shoulders and down the length of her body. She breathes it out. She spits it into the dirt. Javier. Marta. Everything. Her entire life before this moment. Every person she loved who is gone. Her monumental regret. She will leave it here. She stands at Lorenzo's feet. She turns away from him. 'I forgive you,' she says.”

“Angie was a border crosser, a wetback, a worker in the immigrant sweatshop they call this city. On days like this I understand her like a woman instead of a child. Everybody thought she was a whore. She wasn’t. She tried to step across the border of who she was and who she might be. They wouldn’t let her. She didn’t believe it herself so she stepped across into a whole other country.”

“It seems jolly on the page. But imagine poverty, violence, natural disasters, or political fear driving you away from everything you know. Imagine how bad things get to make you leave behind your family, your friends, your lovers; your home, as humble as it might be; your church, say. Let's take it further - you've said good-bye to the graveyard, the dog, the goat, the mountains where you hunted, your grade school, your state, your favorite spot on the river where you fished and took time to think.”