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

The most that somebody in Mexico City will get paid for a job in construction is 100 pesos a day.

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.

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

I realized that I had traveled to Havana during what now seems like the childhood of the Cuban Revolution, if you think that Fidel has now been in power for 44 extremely long years. I started looking at the revolution as history, and not as part of the daily news.

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.