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

I may not have a practical mind, but it's very fixated on concrete things. I like detail.

What I wonder is what would happen in California, say, if all the Mexicans left from one day to the next?

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

Talking in one language and talking in another, I think inevitably, produce two different personalities, as far as I've seen in other people. I assume it does the same for me.

So, you know, I always say that I'm a Mexican, but if I had to be a citizen of anywhere else, I'd be a citizen of Manhattan. I feel very much a New Yorker.

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.