There is no point to samba if it doesn't make you smile.

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

One does, after all, take on many of the givens of a society when one takes on its language.

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.

You know, one, two, three, four, five years go by and then Marcos gets a little boring.

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

Well, one of the things I discovered in the course of looking back and writing about what I saw in my memory is that I was a closely observant person long before I became a reporter.