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

Diplomacy in a sense is the opposite of writing. You have to disperse yourself so much: the lady who comes in crying because shes had a fight with the secretary; exports and imports; students in trouble; thumbtacks for the embassy.

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.

You start by writing to live. You end by writing so as not to die.

In the name of certainty, the greatest crimes have been committed against humanity.

There is no creation without tradition; the 'new' is an inflection on a preceding form; novelty is always a variation on the past.

The Mexicans descend from the Aztecs; the Peruvians descend from the Incas; the Argentineans descend from the boats.