I see children, all children, as humanity's most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left.

You must learn to love only that which cannot be stolen.

My mother had handed down respect for the possibilities...and the will to grasp them.

the world has changed: it did not change without your prayers without your faith without your determination to believe in liberation and kindness; without your dancing through the years that had no beat.

I've found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing.

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.

You are saying, are you not, I said to Manuelito, that stories have more room in them than ideas? [...] He laughed. That is correct, Señor. It is as if ideas are made of blocks. Rigid and hard. And stories are made of a gauze that is elastic. You can almost see through it, so what is beyond is tantalizing. You can't quite make it out; and because the imagination is always moving forward, you yourself are constantly stretching. Stories are the way spirit is exercised.