I have already told you Father, more than once: I’m not going to subject myself to a husband chosen for me, I’m not going to bury myself in some planter’s kitchen, and I’m not going to be a servant to some doctor or lawyer in Ilhéus. I want to live my own life. When I finish school at the end of the year, I want to go to work in an office

I am a writer who has written about the life of my people, the character of my people. What I can say is that the greatest hero of the Brazilian novel is the Brazilian people.

Night was running ahead of itself.

Life was good, one had only to live it.

The world is like that -- incomprehensible and full of surprises .

Many things I might not write today because I no longer believe them, but I wouldn't change them, since I believed them at the time.

He owned a whole world full of memories, of lovely moments relived and happy recollections. I'm not saying he was happy or that he didn't suffer. He suffered very much, but he did not despair; he still drew nourishment from what he had been given. But the sadness never left him. Happiness needs more than memories of the past to feed on; it also needs dreams of the future.