What's happened at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is one of the grossest violations of human rights under the Geneva Conventions that we have record of. It is simply monstrous.

The possibility of being as free with the camera as we are with the pen is a fantastic prospect for the creative life of the 21st century.

Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.

The citizen takes his city for granted far too often. He forgets to marvel.

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

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 have an absolute freedom in Mexican writing today in which you dont necessarily have to deal with the Mexican identity. You know why? Because we have an identity... We know who we are. We know what it means to be a Mexican.