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.

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

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

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.

Night was running ahead of itself.

Love--the most wonderful and most terrible thing in the world.

Love is not to be proven or measured...It exists, and that is enough.