Daniel Alarcon Quotes

The impact of any particular writer on your own work is hard to discern.

I began visiting Lima’s prisons back in 2007, when my first novel, ‘Lost City Radio,’ was published in Peru.

How emigration is actually lived – well, this depends on many factors: education, economic station, language, where one lands, and what support network is in place at the site of arrival.

I think I’m an American writer writing about Latin America, and I’m a Latin American writer who happens to write in English.

I think probably the thing I’m worst at is the most ephemeral stuff, like blogs. I find it really hard to write. And I’m often been asked to write columns for papers in Peru. And I can’t. I would die. There’s no way I could write a column.

I love the novel because it’s like a love affair. You can just fall into it and keep going, and you never know where it’s going to take you.

When I started writing seriously in high school, English was the language I had at my disposal – my Spanish was domestic, colloquial, and not particularly literary or sophisticated.

As a boy, I wanted to be the Peruvian Diego Maradona. Sadly, Peru hasn’t made the World Cup since 1982, so I guess I did well to choose something different.

At the most basic level, I appreciate writers who have something to say.

I’m a sucker for any band named after a work of literature. Los de Abajo take their name from Mariano Azuela’s famous novel ‘The Underdogs,’ and that says a lot about who they are and the music they make.

I write in English because I was raised in the States and educated in this language.

I love to walk through the streets of Jesus Maria and Pueblo Libre. The Spanish colonial buildings are in bright colors, two stories high, with these intricate wooden, windowed balconies.

For fiction, I’m not particularly nationalistic. I’m not like the Hugo Chavez of Latin American letters, you know? I want people to read good work.