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.

People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.

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.

Not only will your teachers appear, but they will cook new foods for you.

The infinite faith I have in people's ability to understand anything that makes sense has always been justified, finally, by their behavior.

In every life there comes a point when you have to make a decision about how you will live.

I was distressed that after 9/11, when the United States was attacked by terrorists, the United States' response was to attack Afghanistan, where some of the terrorists had been.