If the image one holds of one's self contains elements that don't square with reality, one is best advised to let go of them, however difficult that may be.

I wouldn't change a single thing, because one change alters every moment that follows it.

But perhaps more important, as someone wishing to make a comment or two about contemporary life and values, I don't have to dig through libraries or travel to exotic lands to arrive at a view of our modern situation refracted through the lens of the preindustrial world, or the uncommercialized, unfranchised, perhaps unsanitized-and therefore supposedly more "authentic"-perspective ofthe Third World. Very simply, this is because that "other" world, as alien as if separated by centuries in time, is the one from which I came

My father was a tomato farmer. There is the phrase that says he or she worked their fingers to the bone, well, that's my dad. And he was a very good man.

To be compared to Jackie Robinson is an enormous compliment, but I don't think it's necessarily deserved.

I'd seen my father. He was a poor man, and I watched him do astonishing things.

A person doesn't have to change who he is to become better.