I tell my students that education isn’t about facts. It isn’t about theories, either. It is about tracking your thoughts, about witnessing how storie… - Ilan Stavans

There has been for many years resentment of Spain as the conqueror, but a lot of things about modern Spain have changed, he said. We should talk about the Hispanic world as a much more dynamic body made up of Spain, Latin America, the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and Latinos in the U.S.

it is essential that we recognize that in the conquering efforts of the American English language, there is also a cemetery, a series of silences of other languages that have succumbed in the process.

An accessible language is a language that is beautiful. It is a language of understanding, not of pretension. To be accessible is to write not from Mount Sinai but from below, where the people are. The critic has the exact same words (in English, there are close to a million, according to the editors of the OED) available to write poetry, fiction, theater, autobiography, et cetera.