15 Quotes by Achy Obejas

Offspring were a joy or a shame, but still the crown of their elders, nature's unpredictable creatures.

I've gotten to try on voices very different than my own, and I've become much more aware of structure than ever before. Also, you really weigh every word. There's no closer reading then when you read to translate.

I tell people to have a relationship with their work every day, even if it means you just move a comma.

In journalism, if there's a hole in your story you figure out a way around it because you've got a 4 p.m. deadline. It's a neat skill to have but it's deadly for literature. In literature, you need to stare at that hole, not ignore it. You need to figure it out.

Both childbirth and abortion are medical procedures but neither is an illness, and sometimes they're both treated as such.

Journalism is very much public writing, writing with an audience in mind, writing for publication, and frequently writing quickly. And I know that when I worked daily journalism it really affected my patience with literature, which I think requires reflection, and a different kind of engagement.

Each genre has its own process. I'm very intuitive about poetry. I usually write first and second drafts out by hand. The other end of the spectrum is journalism, which is much more cerebral, more thought-out and planned. Fiction lies somewhere in between. I usually start intuitively but eventually I need to stop and consider structure, or research, or both.

So much depends on our health, and we tend to take it so for granted.

I'm never afraid of research. I relish it!