Rudy Ruiz Quotes

The ranches and their history at the crux of the U.S.-Mexico War play a palpable role in my novels. The ranches have personalities of their own. Caja Pinta is grand and majestic, a wide-open and spiritual place that connects its inhabitants to nature and to whatever lies beyond this material world. Some might call it magic. Others might call it God. Regardless, it is a place of boundless possibility. El Dos de Copas is small, scrappy and defiant. It is literally the lowest card in the Spanish deck of playing cards. But it keeps playing. It never gives up. It is a place of beleaguered hope.

I thought it would be fascinating to tell a story from the perspective of a Mexican-American lawman and an Apache healer. These characters come from communities that were facing tremendous hardships and persecution. Yet, they often fought for justice, stood up for their people, and even helped diverse communities survive at times when people had to band together – despite their differences – to overcome life-threatening situations. There are many untold stories of unsung heroes throughout the history of the Southwest. My hope is to help those forgotten people – that often gave their lives for their families and communities – attain a visible presence, an audible voice, and their respectful place in the modern American narrative.

Without love, we're dead.

Discrimination is evil, but evil does not discriminate.

If you're not careful, the blood that you carry inside will turn those dreams that you so love into nightmares.

There's so much competition out there for people's time, and attention, and dollars. So whether it's as a business, or whether it's as a writer who writes a book, if what you're offering is unique, it's going to eventually stand out to people who are looking for that and you're going to connect with your audience.

Parting ways in the plaza, Solitario sat tall in his saddle surveying the changing cityscape. A ball of tumbleweeds rolled aimlessly across the deserted plaza, drifts of dead leaves chasing after it, rustling in the incessant wind. He squinted at the cathedral from beneath his broad sombrero. He saw cracks growing in it with every passing moment. Yes, we will build wells, he thought in response to Elias' question. The water may keep us alive, but it will no longer protect us from our neighbor to the north. Nobody had mentioned it openly yet, but surely others were thinking about it just as he was. With the river rerouted south, they were no longer in Mexico. Their fate rested not on La Virgen's apparition, but in America's hands.

We can't forget our past. We must be vigilant of history's injustices and atrocities. No matter what stone we turn, there is a story to be found. Sometimes it lies in plain sight on the surface. Other times it is hidden deep underground. And, more often than not, the architects of a place's history have used the stone as a foundation upon which they've built a museum of illusions, an image of what they would like the truth to be, and how they would choose to see themselves—but also a structure that shadows and obfuscates the truth, leaving millions in the dark about their own proud histories.

Don't be afraid to love. If you love, you'll never truly be alone.

So strong had his voice become that people on neighboring ranches and farms would drag their rocking chairs onto their patios on the nights they knew he was visiting and listen to the corridos he and Fernando Cisneros sang, their voices carried on the gentle breezes of the Gulf for miles on end.

In a way, diving into that Western and horror aspect of it, it felt like it freed me. It freed me up to have more fun with it in a way, maybe because I wasn't taking myself or my writing as seriously and I was just having fun within those genres. I found it liberating. It's weird to say, because you're putting some constraints around yourself. But then within those constraints, you just opened up this universe within which I could have a lot of fun.

The idea for the curse fit perfectly into my passion for magical realism, but it actually stems from a family legend that indeed the men in my family were cursed. Fortunately, for me, I believe it to be a very colorful – if symbolic – fiction, a more palatable way of explaining our human flaws and failures, our past inability to overcome the burdens of our own histories, social barriers, and bad habits.

In the case of Valley of Shadows, I sort of imagine, could the situation have been different had there been more people of color in positions of power? So it kind of turns the Western on its head by having a Mexican American sheriff be the person that's trying to solve these crimes and bring justice to his town. … And by doing that, I wanted to create a story where the people that have often been marginalized in the telling of these histories have an opportunity to reclaim their place and their role in history.

This place is too pure for the Church. No, let the Church own the giant basilicas and ornate cathedrals. Let the Church own altars encrusted with gold and chambers draped in velvet. This place is for God and His creatures...for you and for me. This patch of salt will be here still after we've all expired, and after the church bells have tumbled to the ground, and after the towers have crumbled and washed out to sea. And even when the sun is silent and nothing but a ball of frozen, burnt-out gas, we'll roam these flowing wisps of grass....

If we can acknowledge the failures of the past alongside its squandered potential, we can also remember and apply our insights and learnings to our present. It is a way we can envision becoming a better people, capable as a nation of emerging from the shadows of our own creation to fulfill the promise of liberty and justice for all.