Latin America is very fond of the word "hope." We like to be called the "continent of hope." Candidates for deputy, senator, president, call themselves "candidates of hope." This hope is really something like a promise of heaven, an IOU whose payment is always being put off. It is put off until the next legislative campaign, until next year, until the next century.

But when I call for a hero, out comes my lazy old self; so I never know who I am, nor how many I am or will be. I'd love to be able to touch a bell and summon the real me, because if I really need myself, I mustn't disappear.

Maybe someone will know I didn't weave crowns to draw blood; that I faught against mockery; that I did fill the high tide of my soul with truth. I repaid vileness with doves.

Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance climbed up through my conscious mind as if suddenly the roots I had left behind cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood - and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.

I have been a lucky man. To feel the intimacy of brothers is a marvelous thing in life. To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses – that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.

When your hands leap towards mine, love, what do they bring me in flight?

Shyness is a condition foreign to the heart - a category, a dimension which leads to loneliness.