Daniel Alarcon Quotes:

Eduardo Halfon is a brilliant storyteller, whose gifts are displayed on every page of this beautiful, daring, and deeply humane book.

Topics: Beautiful, Book, Pages

As a boy, I wanted to be the Peruvian Diego Maradona. Sadly, Peru hasnt made the World Cup since 1982, so I guess I did well to choose something different.

source: - "Daniel Alarcón" by Jennifer L. Knox, www.newyorker.com. June 14 & 21, 2010.

Topics: Boys, Different, World, Peruvians, Peru

For fiction, Im not particularly nationalistic. Im not like the Hugo Chavez of Latin American letters, you know? I want people to read good work.

Topics: Latin, People, Fiction, American Writer, Chavez

When I started writing seriously in high school, English was the language I had at my disposal - my Spanish was domestic, colloquial, and not particularly literary or sophisticated.

source: - "The Exchange: Daniel Alarcón" by Thessaly La Force, www.newyorker.com. May 5, 2009.

Topics: Writing, School, Language, School English

Peru is a country where more than half the people would emigrate if given the chance. Thats half the population that is willing to abandon everything they know for the uncertainty of a life in a foreign land, in another language.

Topics: Country, Land, People, Peru

I'm a sucker for any band named after a work of literature. Los de Abajo take their name from Mariano Azuela's famous novel 'The Underdogs,' and that says a lot about who they are and the music they make.

Topics: Names, Underdog, Band

I have to really think hard about how to structure sentences, and do more mapping when I sit down to write, so it does impose a certain discipline, intellectual and linguistic.

Topics: Writing, Thinking, Discipline, Mapping

I like radio because you can do an hour-long interview and then three days later have a finished piece.

source: - "'This American Life,' en Español". Interview with Ian Gordon, www.motherjones.com. November/December 2012.

Topics: Long, Three, Pieces

I love to walk through the streets of Jesus Maria and Pueblo Libre. The Spanish colonial buildings are in bright colors, two stories high, with these intricate wooden, windowed balconies.

Topics: Jesus, Color, Two, Libre, Bright Colors

I think probably the thing I'm worst at is the most ephemeral stuff, like blogs. I find it really hard to write. And I'm often been asked to write columns for papers in Peru. And I can't. I would die. There's no way I could write a column.

source: - "'This American Life,' en Espanol". Interview with Ian Gordon, www.motherjones.com. November/December 2012.

Topics: Writing, Thinking, Paper

How emigration is actually lived - well, this depends on many factors: education, economic station, language, where one lands, and what support network is in place at the site of arrival.

Topics: Land, Support, Emigration

I think I'm an American writer writing about Latin America, and I'm a Latin American writer who happens to write in English.

Topics: Latin, Writing, Thinking, American Writer, Latin American

I began visiting Lima's prisons back in 2007, when my first novel, 'Lost City Radio,' was published in Peru.

source: - "This Week in Fiction: Daniel Alarcón" by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. July 21, 2013.

Topics: Cities, Radio, Firsts, Peru

The impact of any particular writer on your own work is hard to discern.

source: - "The Exchange: Daniel Alarcón". Interview with Thessaly La Force, www.newyorker.com. May 5, 2009.

Topics: Impact, Particular

At the most basic level, I appreciate writers who have something to say.

source: - "Daniel Alarcón" by Jennifer L. Knox, www.newyorker.com. June 14 & 21, 2010.

Topics: Appreciate, Levels

Publication in 'The New Yorker' meant everything, and it's no exaggeration to say that it changed my life.

source: - "The Exchange: Daniel Alarcón" by Thessaly La Force, www.newyorker.com. May 5, 2009.

Topics: Changed, Exaggeration, Changed My Life

I write in English because I was raised in the States and educated in this language.

source: - "The Exchange: Daniel Alarcón" by Thessaly La Force, www.newyorker.com. May 5, 2009.

Topics: Writing, Language, States

It's true that there are people who live the idea of being an artist, as opposed to the idea of making art,

Topics: Art, Ideas, People

I do feel fortunate to have some knowledge of the great Latin American writers, including some that are probably not that well known in English. Im thinking of Jose Maria Arguedas, whom I read when I was living in Lima, and who really impacted the way I viewed my country.

Topics: Country, Latin, Thinking, American Writer, Latin American

The bond between parent and child is chemical, fierce, and inexplicable, even if that parent is a sworn killer. This connection cannot be measured; it at once more subtle and more powerful than science.

Topics: Children, Powerful, Parent

Ask any human being alive if they're the same person they were seven years ago and they're going to tell you they aren't.

source: - Source: www.guernicamag.com

Topics: Years, Alive, Seven

My first and last love will always be fiction. It's the first thing I do in the morning and the last thing I do at night. I love the novel because it's like a love affair. You can just fall into it and keep going, and you never know where it's going to take you.

Topics: Morning, Fall, Night, Firsts And Lasts

Writing an op-ed feels like I'm taking the SAT. It's so hard. It feels like homework. And if it feels like homework, it just doesn't get done.

source: - Source: www.motherjones.com

Topics: Writing, Done, Homework

I write 1,000 words a day first thing in the morning but I cannot write 240 characters to describe a piece that I spent six weeks working on with a producer.

source: - Source: www.motherjones.com

Topics: Morning, Writing, Character

A novel is like an animal you have to hunt down and kill. If you let it sit for two days, it's got a two-day head start. So, if I just look at it every day, I'm so much better off.

source: - Source: www.motherjones.com

Topics: Animal, Two, Looks, Head Start

Radio is the medium that most closely approximates the experience of reading. As a novelist, I find it very exciting to be able to reach people who might not ever pick up one of my books, either because they can't afford it (as is often the case in Latin America), or because they just don't have the habit of reading novels.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Latin America, Reading Novels

I have a love/hate relationship with the internet. It's obviously the central tool of how I work, and how I keep in touch with all the writers and then producers that I'm collaborating with. Skype saves my life, you know.

source: - Source: www.motherjones.com

Topics: Love Hate Relationship, Skype

There are stories that are by and for Latin Americans, where a certain amount of cultural fluency is expected, where we can delight in the details, the humor, the particularities of speech, of dialects. Something is always lost in translation; we know instinctively that this is the case. A Radio Ambulante story looks at Latin America from the inside.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Lost In Translation, Fluency, Latin American

A lot of attention has been paid in Latin America to the new generation of nonfiction writers, authors like Julio Villanueva Chang, Diego Osorno, Cristóbal Peña, Gabriela Wiener, Leila Guerriero, Cristian Alarcón, among others. These are writers doing important, groundbreaking work. So the talent is there, as is the habit of radio listenership, and what we propose to do is unite the two. We want to have these immensely gifted journalists - men and women who've already revitalized the long-form narrative - we want them to tell their stories in sound.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: Groundbreaking

Generally, I find that when you're writing and having fun with the writing, that energy and dynamism is going to come out in the text one way or another.

source: - Source: www.guernicamag.com

Topics: Dynamism

Meaning can be usually be approximated, but often by sacrificing style. When I review my translations into Spanish, that's what I'm most concerned with, reading the sentences aloud in Spanish to make sure they sound the way I want them to. To be honest, I much prefer being translated into Greek or Japanese; in those cases, you have no way of being involved, and no pressure.

source: - Source: therumpus.net

Topics: No Pressure