Rosario Ferré Quotes

I have had many opinions in my life because I have lived many lives. Ultimately, I can say that in all of my many lives, I have tried to do one fundamental thing: I have attempted to bring self-respect back to Puerto Ricans. That has been my purpose and I have been consistent in this. I believe that if readers can see themselves in what I write, if they realize that they share something with those characters, then they can understand themselves better and they can accept themselves. And when you accept yourself, you gain self-respect. If I have provided that space for two or three people in the world, I am more than satisfied.

The fundamental truth of my life, the principle that governs it, is that nobody has a monopoly over the truth. Every person is a lens that focuses reality in a different way and everybody has the right to do so. This, in fact, is an anarchist principle, for I am indeed, an anarchist. From the moment I position myself at a certain standpoint, I immediately see things from that perspective and from its opposing perspective…

I do believe in inspiration, but more so in dedication.

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.

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.

…Feminine literature is much more subversive than the literature of the men because women often dare to delve into prohibited areas bordering the irrational and the mad, areas dealing with love and death, areas which in our rational, productive, and utilitarian society become dangerous when one acknowledges their existence.

It's not that I want to victimize men, but I think that women have been the victims throughout the centuries, a fact which has been incorporated into mythology and which I thought it was high time to change.

A story is like building a chapel; a novel is a cathedral: That's the difference.

…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…

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

When I was fourteen I used to read literature in English. I read textbooks and the newspapers in Spanish, but when I really started to get into literature was when I started reading Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights

[about being at college] It was there I learned that Ponce, which seemed as large as the universe itself when I lived on Aurora Street, was really a very small town. (chapter 18, p185)

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.

Abby used to say adaptability was the secret of survival-one's soul should bend and then it wouldn't break. (chapter 29, p295)

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.