It's very painful to be in debt. I'm the kind of person who would rather almost die than go into debt.

Whatever I do I've always done not because I want something but to compensate for a loss, to bring about a balance, to create amends, to make things right.

Really the best way to learn about something is simply to read it and not make a scientific theory of interpretation.

I have seen lonely people of advancing age, yet as constant as angels, keeping faith to those they loved who fell in wars that current generations, not having known them, cannot even forget. The sight of them moving hesitantly among the tablets and crosses is enough to break your heart.

Why do people resist [engines, bridges, and cities] so? They are symbols and products of the imagination, which is the force that ensures justice and historical momentum in an imperfect world, because without imagination we would not have the wherewithal to challenge certainty, and we could never rise above ourselves.

When you die, you know, you hear the insistent pounding that defines all things, whether of matter or energy, since there is nothing in the universe, really, but proportion.

I follow my own nose. So I read things that are different. People will always say to me, "Have you read Robert S. Bosco's latest novel?" or "Have you read so and so's history of Peru, which is reviewed in the New York Review of Books and the New York Times and has a buzz about it?" I don't even know what you're talking about. I'm like from another planet. I'm a pygmy from the jungle.