“Perfection shall remain the boring privilege of the gods, while our bungling, messy world every night shall be lived as if it were the last and every day as if it were the first.”

“In this world of ours, a world of powerful centers and subjugated outposts, there is no wealth that must not be held in some suspicion.”

“Each person shines with his or her own light. No two flames are alike. There are big flames and little flames, flames of every color. Some people’s flames are so still they don’t even flicker in the wind, while others have wild flames that fill the air with sparks. Some foolish flames neither burn nor shed light, but others blaze with life so fiercely that you can’t look at them without blinking, and if you approach you shine in the fire.”

“Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of our imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude.”

“The NobodiesFleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escapingpoverty: that one magical day good luck will suddenly rain down onthem---will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn't rain downyesterday, today, tomorrow, or ever. Good luck doesn't even fall in afine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if theirleft hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day with their rightfoot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.The nobodies: nobody's children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: theno ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life,screwed every which way.Who are not, but could be.Who don't speak languages, but dialects.Who don't have religions, but superstitions.Who don't create art, but handicrafts.Who don't have culture, but folklore.Who are not human beings, but human resources.Who do not have faces, but arms.Who do not have names, but numbers.Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the policeblotter of the local paper.The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.”

“And one fine day the goddess of the wind kisses the foot of man, that mistreated, scorned foot, and from that kiss the soccer idol is born. He is born in a straw crib in a tin-roofed shack and he enters the world clinging to a ball.”

“Celebration of the Human Voice---When it is genuine, when it is born of the need to speak, no one can stop the human voice. When denied a mouth, it speaks with the hands or the eyes, or the pores, or anything at all. Because every single one of us has something to say to the others, something that deserves to be celebrated or forgiven by others.”