Even on the poorest streets people could be heard laughing. Some of these streets were completely dark, like black holes, and the laughter that came from who knows where was the only sign, the only beacon that kept residents and strangers from getting lost.

Death, in the Eastern tradition, was only a passage. What wasn't clear ... was toward what place, what reality, that passage led.

Every book in the world is out there waiting to be read by me.

Literature is the product of a strange rain of blood, sweat, semen, and tears.

Poetry is the one thing that isn't contaminated, the one thing that isn't part of the game.

We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.

The American mirror, said the voice, the sad American mirror of wealth and poverty and constant useless metamorphosis, the mirror that sails and whose sails are pain.