she's never forgotten, either, how a mystery caught in the hand could lose its grace

The things I carry closest to my heart are things I can't own.

That's how it is: some people are content to wait till you ask, while others jump right in with the whole story.

Feeling that morality has nothing to do with the way you use the resources of the world is an idea that can't persist much longer. If it does, then we won't.

...our best task is to move forward without insisting others slide backward.

It's the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.

Mexico admits you through an arched stone orifice into the tree-filled courtyard of its heart, where a dog pisses against a wall and a waiter hustles through a curtain of jasmine to bring a bowl of tortilla soup, steaming with cilantro and lime. Cats stalk lizards among the clay pots around the fountain, doves settle into the flowering vines and coo their prayers, thankful for the existence of lizards. The potted plants silently exhale, outgrowing their clay pots. Like Mexico's children they stand pinched and patient in last year's too-small shoes.