A good writer always works at the impossible.

When Kino had finished, Juana came back to the fire and ate her breakfast. They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyway. Kino sighed with satisfaction - and that was conversation.

When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.

Change was everywhere. People were gone, or changed, and that was almost like being gone.

A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.

In Spanish there is a word for which I can't find a counterword in English. It is the verb VACILAR... It does not mean vacillating at all. If one is vacilando, he is going somewhere, but does not greatly care whether or not he gets there, although he has direction.

It was too nerve-wracking, a shocking spectacle, like seeing an old, calm friend go insane.