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21 " Let's say you're sitting in a group meeting when the counselor calls you a gang member.You're offended. You hang around with people of the same cloth, the same experience, the same sufferings. These are your friends, like family. You don't think of yourselves as gang members, but of course, technically, that's what you are.And let's say you embrace the label. "
― Daniel Alarcón , The King Is Always Above the People: Stories
22 " But if what a novel exudes has not been felt properly or seriously or deeply enough by the writer, then it will show and I will become tremendously bored and irritated. "
― Daniel Alarcón , The Secret Miracle: The Novelist's Handbook
23 " SANTIAGO RONCAGLIOLO: I always start from real emotions and experiences because I think that gives the narrative a lot of force. But the act of writing consists precisely in distorting those facts through fiction, injecting them with lies, until fantasy overtakes reality. The truth is never enough. That’s why I write novels. "
24 " Ellos no querían hablar sobre la guerra, suponía él, querían hablar sobre sus tíos, sus primos, sus vecinos en aquellos pueblos que abandonaron hacía tanto tiempo; sobre cómo era el olor de la tierra en su hogar, el ruido de la lluvia al caer en ráfagas sobre las copas de los árboles, los colores chillones de la campiña en flor. "
― Daniel Alarcón , Lost City Radio
25 " But I also think I have never seen it in a book—the thing I needed to read, just then, and this feeling makes me agitated and restless: it makes me want to write the book where someone could find the thing I needed to read in the last seven or eight years. "
26 " used to plan endlessly, but it never made much difference. Everything happens in the actual writing, for me. Now I just live in a book for three years or so. The computer is always on. I make decisions. I revise decisions. The book falls apart. The book comes together in a different way. The new book falls apart. I hold my nerve. The book I start writing—the easy, confident, public book—always turns fraudulent, for me, and I realize that I have "
27 " Writing is nothing if not solving problems you’ve created for yourself. There are no outside solutions or methods. "
28 " The story always starts with the character. In a way, there’s no decision. If there’s no character there’s no story. "
29 " Let’s take the city for example. I love that place-I realize this is a controversial statement in this crowd, but I do. Listen. I love its grey skies, its rude people, its disorder, its noise. I love the stories I’ve lived there, the landmarks... "
30 " Melankoli adeta kimyasalmış. Havada asılıymış. Sabahları kokusunu duyabilirmişsin. "
― Daniel Alarcón , At Night We Walk in Circles
31 " They spoke without much fluency about a minor universe of events that affected neither of them: the vagaries of neighborhood life, people they both knew but didn't much care about. "
― Daniel Alarcón
32 " The friendship was never repaired, of course, but, then, how could it be? The two men had met in the nineteen-seventies and had seen each other only twice in the intervening years. The mutual affection they felt was an almost entirely theoretical construct, based on memories of long ago shared experiences- not unlike what I felt toward my brother by then, I suppose. Part fading recollections, part faith. "
33 " These emotions are quite beside the point now, like an artifact looted from an ancient grave, an oddly shaped tool whose utility no one can quite decipher. "