Because each of you has his or her own death, you carry it with you in a secret place from the moment you're born, it belongs to you and you belong to it.

The ear has to be educated if one wishes to appreciate musical sounds, just as the eyes must learn to distinguish the value of words.

I am traveling less in order to be able to write more. I select my travel destinations according to their degree of usefulness to my work.

I do not just write, I write what I am. If there is a secret, perhaps that is it.

It is economic power that determines political power, and governments become the political functionaries of economic power.

The period that I could consider the most important in my literary work came about beginning with the Revolution, and in a certain way, developed as a consequence of the Revolution. But it was also a result of the counterrevolutionary coup of November 1975.

...sometimes we ask ourselves why happiness took so long to arrive, why it didn't come sooner, but appears suddenly, as now, when we've given up hope of it ever arriving, it's likely then that we won't know what to do, and rather than it being a question of choosing between laughter and tears, we will be filled by a secret anxiety to which we might not know how to respond at all.