Usually, you don't know where a book comes from ... it's just there, some kind of an itch that you can't quite scratch.

You are either born a writer or you are not.

The names of the cerros and the sierras and the deserts exist only on maps. We name them that we do not lose our way. Yet it was because the way was lost to us already that we have made those names. The world cannot be lost. We are the ones. And it is because these names and these coordinates are our own naming that they cannot save us. They cannot find for us the way again.

You say you can't? Then don't do it. That's all.

It was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily.

... a man leaves much when he leaves his own country.

He poured the tumbler full. Drink up, he said. The world goes on. We have dancing nightly and this night is no exception. The straight and the winding way are one and now that you are here what do the years count since last we two met together? Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.