“Helena dreamed about the keepers of the fire. The poorest old women had stored it away in suburban kitchens and had only to blow very gently on their palms to rekindle the flame”

“The dreams were off on a trip. Helena went as far as the train station with them. She bade them farewell from the platform, waving a handkerchief”

“The world,' he revealed, 'is a heap of people, a sea of tiny flames.'Each person shines with his or her own light. No two flames are alike. There are big flames and little flames, flames of every colour. Some peoples 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 fire.”

“If thats how it was done, and thats how it had always been done, there had to be a reason”

“Here," an old sugar worker told me, "the people have a great love for martyrs--but only after they're dead. Before, there's nothing but complaints.”

“The Revolution, after discovering that it had confused the knife with the assassin, turned sugar, which had been responsible for underdevelopment, into an instrument of development. There was no alternative, born of Cuba's incorporation into the world market, to break the spine of that monoculture and dependence.”

“In our day, this global offensive plays a well-defines role. Its aim is to justify te very unequal income distribution between countries and social elates, to convince the poor that poverty is the result of the children they don't avoid having, and to dam the rebellious advance of the masses.”