The wages Haiti requires by law belong in the department of science fiction: actual wages on coffee plantations vary from $.07 to $.15 a day

The tree of life knows that, whatever happens, the warm music spinning around it will never stop. However much death may come, however much blood may flow, the music will dance men and women as long as the air breaths them and the land plows and loves them.

When a book is alive, really alive, you feel it. You put it to your ear here, and you feel it breathe, sometimes laugh, sometimes cry, just like a person, a little person.

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.

The more freedom is extended to business, the more prisons have to be built for those who suffer from that business.

I'm not asking you to describe the rain falling the night the archangel arrived; I'm demanding that you get me wet. Make up your mind, Mr. Writer, and for once in your life be the flower that smells rather than the chronicler of the aroma. There's not much pleasure in writing what you live. The challenge is to live what you write.

Richness in the world is a result of other people's poverty. We should begin to shorten the abyss between haves and have-nots.