The poet, distracted by politics, asks of poetry that it make itself useful like metal or flour, that it get ready to stain its face with coal dust and fight body to body.

Because every single one of us has something to say to the others, something that deserves to be celebrated or forgiven by others

Latin America is part of the world which was for many years condemned to the system of power where intimidation had more strength than the vote.

Many small people, in small places, doing small things can change the world.

Writing is a marvelous adventure and very labor-intensive: those words run away and try to escape. They are very difficult to capture.

Human rights pale beside the rights of machines. In more and more cities, especially in the great metropolises of the South, people have been banned. Automobiles usurp human space, poison the air, and frequently murder the interlopers who invade their conquered territory -and no one lifts a finger to stop them. Is there a difference between violence that kills by car and that which kills by knife or bullet?" (p.231)

I have never killed anybody, it is true, but it is because I lacked the courage or the time, not because I lacked the desire