It was the time when they loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity.

The rain would not have bothered Fernanda, after all, her whole life had been spent as if it were raining.

There was no sleeper more elegant than she, with her curved body posed for a dance and her hand across her forehead, but there was also no one more ferocious when anyone disturbed the sensuality of her thinking she was still asleep when she no longer was.

To oppression, plundering and abandonment, we respond with life.

He thought about his people without sentimentality, with a strict closing of his accounts with life, beginning to understand how much he really loved the people he hated most.

I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.

The problem in public life is learning to overcome terror; the problem in married life is learning to overcome boredom.