Richard Rodriguez Quotes

104 Sourced Quotes

It interests Americans that Canada is clean and empty and unimplicating; the largest country in the world that doesn't exist. Without distinct music or food or capacity for rudeness— less rich, less angry, less complicated, less neurotic, less dark, less brilliant.

Richard Rodriguez
Americans experience time in two distinct ways—as religious people and as people of no religion. Just so, we experience ourselves as a historical people and as people who are not implicated by history.

Richard Rodriguez
It would be another two decades before I came upon the words that made me think I had a story to tell—the opening words of Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior: You must not tell anyone, my mother said, what I am about to tell you. The immigrant mother's prohibition to her daughter reminded me of my own mother's warning about spreading family secrets. In the face of California's fame for blatancy—in the face of pervasive light, ingenuousness, glass-and-aluminum housing, bikinis, billboards—Mrs. Hong recommended concealment.

Richard Rodriguez
If I ask questions about religion that my grandparents didn't ask, it is not because I am intellectually advanced. I wonder about the existence of God because, unlike my grandparents, I live much of my day in a secular city where I do not measure the hours with the tolling bells of a church.

Richard Rodriguez
A friend of mine in Brooklyn was talking about ethnic writers, and he was using Amy Tan as an example. And he said, "You know, the really interesting thing about ethnic writers in America right now is that the women sit down and tell these sets of interesting stories. Asian girl meets blonde boy and they go to Harvard together—they're dopey stories, but everybody loves them, and they're best sellers. That's what the women write, whereas the guys struggle and try to find these new literary forms—writing these intricate parables that nobody quite follows and so forth." And he said, "Isn't it interesting that women have always had this kind of genius for telling stories in the kitchen."

Richard Rodriguez
I would meet screenwriters in L. A. who would write these very complicated sitcoms like Cheers and who'd have the most extraordinary sense of plot of anybody I've ever met. I saw the insides of lots of great houses. And I met people who you and I would regard as famous, and then realized some very interesting things about them, like how lonely they are. It was those years I was least a minority. In a sense, I owned the world. I owned it because I had certain charms that allowed me to insinuate myself into the world. Intellectually, it was very satisfying to be at the edge of this world. But when it became clear to me that I wanted to write this book, I had to divorce myself from that world and move to San Francisco.

Richard Rodriguez
It is education that has altered my life. Carried me far.

Richard Rodriguez
Rodriguez: When my mother read Hunger of Memory, she was horrified by it and she asked me, as an accusation, "Why did you hold these things in all of your years against me, why didn't you tell me? If I offended you by talking about how dark you were in the summer why didn't you tell me that? And tell me to stop? Why do you hold that for another 25 years and then spill it all out?" Good question, Mama. Good question.

Richard Rodriguez
In the first televised presidential debate, Nixon thought he was upholding some puritan gravitas by refusing makeup; by choosing the citizen's black suit; choosing the poor man's version of natural aristocracy. Nixon was easily the more able in his grasp of history and the workings of government. John F. Kennedy, gold-dusted and ghostwritten, appeared completely natural. Nixon perspired. In an instant, I saw what many other Americans saw that night: Harvard College will always beat Whittier College in America. The game is fixed and there is nothing to be done about it.

Richard Rodriguez
I never learned to throw a baseball with confidence, but I knew how to aim a newspaper well enough. I could make my mark from the sidewalk—one hand on the handlebar—with deadeye nonchalance. The paper flew over my shoulder; it twirled over hedges and open sprinklers to land with a fine plop only inches from the door. In the growling gray light (San Francisco still has foghorns), I collect the San Francisco Chronicle from the wet steps. I am so lonely I must subscribe to three papers

Richard Rodriguez
The paradox of monotheism is that the desert God, refuting all other gods, demands acknowledgment within emptiness. The paradox of monotheism is that there is no paradox—only unfathomable singularity

Richard Rodriguez
Nineteenth-century California rewarded only a few of its brotherhood, but it rewarded them as deliriously as an ancient king in an ancient myth would reward.

Richard Rodriguez
The liberal-hearted who run the newspapers and the university English departments and organize the bookstores have turned literature into well-meaning sociology. Thus do I get invited by the editor at some magazine to review your gay translation of a Colombian who has written a magical-realist novel. Trust me, there has been little magical realism in my life since my first trip to Disneyland.

Richard Rodriguez
I never forgot that schooling had irretrievably changed my family's life. That knowledge, however, did not weaken ambition. Instead, it strengthened resolve. Those times I remembered the loss of my past with regret, I quickly reminded myself of all the things my teachers could give me. (They could make me an educated man.) I tightened my grip on pencil and books. I evaded nostalgia. Tried hard to forget. But one does not forget by trying to forget. One only remembers. I remembered too well that education had changed my family's life. I would not have become a scholarship boy had I not so often remembered.

Richard Rodriguez