I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.

There is something fresh and crisp about the first hours of a Caribbean day, a happy anticipation that something is about to happen, maybe just up the street or around the next corner.

The greatest mania of all is passion: and I am a natural slave to passion: the balance between my brain and my soul and my body is as wild and delicate as the skin of a Ming vase.

I harbor a secret urge to whack a salesman in the face, crack his teeth and put red bumps around his eyes.

Sportswriters are a rude and brainless subculture of fascist drunks

To give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies something very close to egomania. To presume to point a man to the right and ultimate goal - to point with a trembling finger in the RIGHT direction is something only a fool would take upon himself.

we left about midnight and walked down the hill in silence. the night was muggy, and all around me i felt the same pressure, a sense of time rushing by while it seemed to be standing still. whenever i thought of time in puerto rico, i was reminded of those old magnetic clocks that hung on the walls of my classrooms in high school. every now and then a hand would not move for several minutes -- and if i watched it long enough, wondering if it had finally broken down, the sudden click of the hand jumping three for four notches would startle me when it came.