All working, practical political systems, even those professing to originate in moral grandeur, are based upon and operate by contempt of human life and the individual fate.

Don't you love being alive?" asked Miranda. "Don't you love weather and the colors at different times of the day, and all the sounds and noises like children screaming in the next lot, and automobile horns and little bands playing in the street and the smell of food cooking?" "I love to swim, too." said Adam. "So do I," said Miranda, "we never did swim together.

In this moment she felt that she had been robbed of an enormous number of valuable things, whether material or intangible: things lost or broken by her own fault, things she had forgotten and left in houses when she moved: books borrowed from her and not returned, journeys she had planned and had not made, words she had waited to hear spoken to her and had not heard, and the words she meant to answer with. . . .

There are only a few bits of absolute knowledge in the world, people can learn only one or two fundamental facts about each other, the rest is decoration and prejudice.

It's a man's world, and you men can have it.

Mexican writer and diplomat, "Pasado en claro" ("A Draft of Shadows") You learn something the day you die. You learn how to die.

The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one's own even more, one's own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being.