for how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can remember only that you had them.

All we got is the family unbroke.

We only have one story. All novels, all poetry are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil.

Everyone I have ever known very well has been concerned that I would eventually starve. Probably I shall. It isn't important enough to me to be an obsession.

It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.

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.

Orange and speckled and fluted nudibranchs slide gracefully over the rocks, their skirts waving like the dresses of Spanish dancers.