Top 15 Elena Poniatowska Quotes

We have all been made bad, we are all needy, all unwanted guests around the feast, invited at the last minute. In recognizing this lies our creativity.

That the poorest Mexicans don't deserve their ruling class is a truth that leaps out at once.

I have always been drawn to characters like Jesusa Palancares. María Sabina, the one who performed the ceremony of the sacred mushrooms (LSD in Oaxaca), Juan Perez Jolote (the Chamula peasant from Chiapas), Demetrio Vallejo (the railroad leader), all popular heroes, even if they are not recognized. I admire them because of their wisdom and the way they impart it, with great patience, great prudence, with respect for the ignorance of the person who asks the questions.

I have always had questions, and to this day, I don't have a single answer.

I live to the rhythm of my country and I cannot remain on the sidelines. I want to be here. I want to be part of it. I want to be a witness. I want to walk arm in arm with it. I want to hear it more and more, to cradle it, to carry it like a medal on my chest. Activism is a constant element in my life, even though afterwards I anguish over not having written "my own things." Testimonial literature provides evidence of events that people would like to hide, denounces and therefore is political and part of a country in which everything remains to be done and documented.

I have always responded to challenges, followed apocalyptical personalities, apostles, Rasputins, Joan of Arcs who hear voices that come from Heaven, illuminated guides of humanity, holders of truth, priests.

Carefully I asked them questions, visited them in their crowded neighborhoods, watched their kites cross the sky in February, treated them like kites, because that's how testimonial literature is. It fills one with anxiety, with insecurity. One handles very fragile material, people's hearts; their names, which are their honor; their work; and their time. And one tries to turn it into memorable material.

I would like to return to earth because I love life.

Life is very resistant. People-the same cannon fodder that nourishes great universal misfortunes, "the wretched of the earth," as Frantz Fanon called them. Suddenly, during an earthquake, one of them saves a life.

in Latin America reality surpasses fiction.

To this day, if I ask so many questions, it is because I don't have a single answer. I believe I will die like this, still searching, with a question mark engraved on my eyelids.

Without realizing it the maids provided me with a version of Benito Juárez; they were all like Benito Juárez. Like him they vindicated themselves: "Dirty foreigners." Like him they defended Mexico, as stubborn as mules. Like him they had no roof of their own and had eaten only poor people's food, and for me, a girl raised on French mashed potatoes, discovering them meant entering into "the other."

I absorbed Mexico through the maids. A system still persists in Latin America which consists of privileged people having at their beck and call the poorest of the poor.

Widows used to go around the way the poet Jaime Sabines would like them to: "There is one way, my love, that you could make me completely happy: die." Now widows are not even merry.

I write in order to belong.