Rosario Ferré Quotes

If the writer is trying to interpret the meaning of life, all of what he writes is autobiographical…When you write fiction, you are wearing a mask, you are dealing with magic. The novelist is like the shaman; he reinterprets the life of the tribe in terms of his fictitious characters, in order to bring out the devils. And that's what literature does.

Coral explained to Manuel that political ideals were very important. Believing in something made you think; it kept your spirit alive. (chapter 34, p340)

Puerto Rico, like all the countries of the Caribbean, is a nation where fantastic reality, the world of magic, is ever present. There are various sects of white magic, such as Santeria. It is a reality that is very palpable in our environment, and this is why there are no great differences between fantasy and reality...All Caribbean writers have this in common.

[He] worshiped her; her merest whim was a matter of dogma to him. If he lived in a world of fantasy in which art had taken the place of religion, that was all right with her. After all, I can help him be happy in life as well as in death, she thought. Our needs cancel each other out, and that's as solid a base for love as any. ("Isolda's Mirror")

These times made me search for guidance within myself, for a reason to live. This is where my literature comes from.

Every country that aspires to become a nation needs its heroes, its eminent civic and moral leaders, and if it doesn't have them, it's our duty to invent them. ("Sweet Diamond Dust")

I have the idea that people who are very repressed tend to be inner-oriented; they talk to themselves more than other people. People who have difficulties making themselves heard have usually been brought up in stifling environments. Maybe that's why I felt as I did-because I was very timid. Maybe that's why my writing is so violent, in a way.

She seldom smiled, but when she did, I felt as if she were pouring oil on my wounds. (chapter 19, p204)

I certainly don't think that the discovery and colonization of America by Spain is anything that should be glorified. The first Indians who came into contact with the Spaniards were the Taínos, the native Puerto Rican Indians, who were a very peaceful people. The relationship which developed at first was very interesting because the Indians had no idea what the Spaniards would eventually do, and they trusted them and befriended them. The Indian leader Agüeybana even offered his daughter in marriage to Juan Ponce de León. But then they realized that what the Spaniards were doing was taking them as slaves, and this is when they began to rebel, without any success. When one thinks of what happened, it is truly an extermination of a people, comparable only to what happened with the Jews in World War II.

He created the house on the lagoon as one would create a poem or a statue, breathing life into its every stone. (chapter 6, p49)

There's still a fraternity of men. They admire themselves, and they admire each other's works. I think they are a little bit scared of women, too.

I have always wanted to understand certain things about myself and my life, but in order to know what I think, I have to write it down first.

the most revolutionary aspect of my books resides in their participation in the feminist struggle—in the search for individual freedom.

…there should be an absolute identification between the individual's experience and the writer's so that [experience] serves as the starting point for being able to write a short story or a novel later on…

"Sometimes it's necessary to believe in love, even if it doesn't exist," he said with a suave smile. ("Isolda's Mirror")