Daniel Alarcon Quotes

We breathe in our first language, and swim in our second.

The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise.

French was my first language.

I grew up speaking Arabic at home.

No instance exists of a person's writing two language perfectly. That will always appear to be his native language which was most familiar to him in his youth.

We've been speaking English as a second language so long that we've forgotten it as our first.

A writer can have only one language, if language is going to mean anything to him.

The fact is I do feel very Spanish, like when I'm talking to my wife and daughter in Spanish at two in the afternoon. I even think in Spanish when I get angry!

Spanish is actually my first language, growing up, and I understand the culture. I understand the culture; I understand what the people want.

I was always writing. I've always been attracted to words and stories, communication.

Poets are like the decathletes of literature.

I find it hard to write really cool texts in German. At some point I had the feeling that it didn't work for me any more. So I'd rather not write any German songs at all than write uncool ones.

The first time I ever wrote anything, it was an editorial column for my high school newspaper.

Spanish is my first language.

I've been writing since I was maybe seven.

I'm writing; I'm teaching myself writing.

I hate to write! But I love to talk, so I'm told that when people read my books, it like I'm there just talking with them.

I've always been a writer. I've always loved words, ever since I was a kid.

I have just discovered the beautiful poetry of Soren Ulrik Thomsen. Danish is not the strongest of languages, but he uses it very well.

When I was in high school, I took French. I barely passed and didn't learn anything at all. There was a joke among me and my friends in the class that nothing sounded more ridiculous than a guy with a country accent speaking French.

You can sort of start to write around 10. You also become a good reader around that time, and you want to imitate the thing that you love. I got praise for it, and then I found that it was a great way of translating my life, so I would write little stories and plays and things. At that point, it was kids' books that I was reading.

Read everything you can on writing. Join online forums and critique groups, go to conferences, get feedback, and learn, learn, learn!

I worry these days that Latinos in California speak neither Spanish nor English very well. They are in a kind of linguistic limbo between the two. They don't really have a language, and are, in some deep sense, homeless.

I may speak many languages, but there remains one in which I live.

I have a funny relationship to language. When I came to California when I was three I spoke Urdu fluently and I didn't speak a word of English. Within a few months I lost all my Urdu and spoke only English and then I learned Urdu all over again when I was nine. Urdu is my first language but it's not as good as my English and it's sort of become my third language. English is my best language but was the second language I learned.