Oscar Hijuelos Quotes & Sayings

On his back, Robert must have had time to see something beautiful, and not just the ugliness of a city street at the end of life. Even with the tremendous pain in his badly gutted belly he would have looked up beyond the fire escapes and the windows with their glittery trees and television glows, to the sky about the rooftops. A sky shimmery with the possibilities of the death; lights exaggerated, the heavens peeled back- a swirling haze of nebulae and comets - in some distant place, intimations of the new beginning into which he would soon journey — Oscar Hijuelos

Oh yes! ... The sweet summons of God to man. That's when He calls you up to His arms. And it's the most beautiful thing, a rebirth, a new life. But, just the same I'm in no rush to find out. — Oscar Hijuelos

Music infuses your spirit with a certain energy that I try to convey in my work. — Oscar Hijuelos

As a kid I had all kinds of questions about how I fit it with my neighborhood and friends and other Latinos. — Oscar Hijuelos

I enjoy listening to contemporary rock on the college stations while I'm taking long walks, love gospel and soul music, am fascinated by hip-hop and rap as the new kind of urban 'beat' poetry and, come to think of it, find something interesting about just any kind of music. — Oscar Hijuelos

If you start believing all that press about you, you're in trouble. I don't even read my reviews. — Oscar Hijuelos

When you're writing a novel - at least the way I write is I work from what I would call 'emotional atmosphere,' ambiance to ambiance. — Oscar Hijuelos

I like to encourage young talented writers to try and help them get published and so forth, but that's all. That's the best I can do. — Oscar Hijuelos

Latins are predisposed to thinking about the past. Catholicism has a lot to do with it because Catholicism is a contemplation of the past, of symbols that are supposed to be eternally present. — Oscar Hijuelos

Nightclubs are the equivalent of a Catholic Church in a poor country. You hear a lot of stuff about churches filled with gold while the people are starving. But what elitists don't get is that for poor people, the church is their own mansion. Nightclubs fill the same function. — Oscar Hijuelos

When you write fiction, you can sort of invent more but also pack it with emotions that are very pertinent to you. Whereas with nonfiction, you have to be as factual as possible but also hopefully - also bring ... emotional relevance to the piece. — Oscar Hijuelos

I teach at Duke, and I have students who are all of twenty who want to write memoirs, and you know it's all pretty interesting stuff, but a lot of them lack gravitas, you know. — Oscar Hijuelos

A great novel is worth one thousand films. — Oscar Hijuelos

Of course, I grew up hearing Latin music but, to be honest, aside from my personal circumstances, like most kids I wanted to rebel against what I considered to be such old fashioned fare. — Oscar Hijuelos

The house in which the fourteen sisters of Emilio Montez O'brien lived, radiated femininity. — Oscar Hijuelos

I have never - I have never let go of my childhood contacts. My best friends from childhood are still my best friends. — Oscar Hijuelos

It's true that immigrant novels have to do with people going from one country to another, but there isn't a single novel that doesn't travel from one place to another, emotionally or locally. — Oscar Hijuelos

People in their forties, fifties, and onward enjoy the whole world of books in a different way than the Internet-age kids do. — Oscar Hijuelos