They could read him, they could study him, they could pick him apart, but they couldn't laugh or be sad with him.

Literature is a vast forest and the masterpieces are the lakes, the towering trees or strange trees, the lovely, eloquent flowers, the hidden caves, but a forest is also made up of ordinary trees, patches of grass, puddles, clinging vines, mushrooms, and little wildflowers.

When people read his books they have an uncontrollable desire to hang the author in the town square. I can’t think of a higher honor for a writer.

In the current socio-political climate, he said to himself, committing suicide is absurd and redundant. Better to become an undercover poet.

We're artists too, but we do a good job hiding it, don't we?

I’m seventeen years old, my name is Juan García Madero, and I’m in my first semester of law school. I wanted to study literature, not law, but my uncle insisted, and in the end I gave in. I’m an orphan, and someday I’ll be a lawyer. That’s what I told my aunt and uncle, and then I shut myself in my room and cried all night.

we interpret life at moments of the deepest desperation.