She regretted nothing she had shared with her lover, nor was she ashamed of the fires that had changed her life; just the opposite, she felt that they had tempered her, made her strong, given her pride in making decisions and paying the consequences for them.

He realized...that the loudest are the least sincere, that arrogance is a quality of the ignorant, and that flatterers tend to be vicious.

I began to wonder whether anything truly existed, whether reality wasn't an unformed and gelatinous substance only half-captured by my senses....If that were true, each of us was living in absolute isolation. The thought terrified me. I was consoled by the idea that I could take that gelatin and mold it to create anything I wanted...At times I felt that the universe fabricated from the power of the imagination had stronger and more lasting contours than the blurred realm of the flesh-and-blood creatures around me.

She intended to swallow the world and he lived crushed by reality.

I have travelled all over the world and one thing that amazes me is that I can communicate with people. My story may be different but emotionally we are all the same.

At my age days dissolve like salt in water; the day's gone and I don't even know what I've done with the hours.

I come from the so-called Third World (what is the Second)?