You, yesterday, did the usual things, just as any day, You don't know if it's worth remembering. You would prefer to remember, there lying in the half-darkness of the bedroom, not what has happened already but what is going to happen. In your half-darkness your eyes would prefer to look ahead, not behind, and they do not know how to foresee the past.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

The United States condoned dictatorships in Latin America for much of the 20th century.

There are people whose external reality is generous because it is transparent, because you can read everything, accept everything, understand everything about them: people who carry their own sun with them.

What America does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is to understand others.

Reading, writing, teaching, learning, are all activities aimed at introducing civilizations to each other.

By its very nature, the novel indicates that we are becoming. There is no final solution. There is no last word.