45 Quotes by Alma Guillermoprieto

I went to school at a school that doesn't exist anymore. It was called the Walden School, so you can guess a lot of things from it by the name, right? We were allowed to smoke in the classroom. We all wore blue jeans and sandals.

For the kids, who in their lives have never known the slightest power, delinquency is a way of looking for power.

An essential part of the magic involves turning everyone into an enemy, to ward off surprises.

Peron had a wise saying. In politics, you can recover from anything except looking like a fool.

Investigative reporting is the bone structure without which the journalistic body collapses. The Center for Public Integrity's constant and consistently enterprising investigative work is an invaluable contribution not only to journalism, but to society and to a healthy democracy

The best translators slip into the glove of a text and then turn it inside out into another language, and the whole thing comes out looking like a brand-new glove again. I'm completely in awe of this skill, since I happen to be both bilingual and a writer, but nevertheless a lousy translator.

I think the great Mexican cuisine is dying because there are fast foods now competing, because there are supermarkets, and supermarkets can't afford to keep in stock a lot of these very perishable products that are used for fine Mexican cooking. Women are working and real Mexican cooking requires enormous amounts of time.

Translation is a notoriously thankless profession: there is absolutely no money in it; it involves a severe submersion of the self into another; the hours are long and you get about as much recognition for your efforts as the telephone repairman.

Somebody will come from Village X and then they'll send for the brother and then they'll send for the sister and then they'll send for the brother-in-law and then they'll send for the wife of the brother-in-law. Everybody sharing a very small house or an apartment, working in shifts and sending money back to the family.