“The slave who dances is free ... while he is dancing.”

“Seated by her side in the narrow cabin, pressing cold compresses to her forehead and holding her while she vomited, he felt profoundly happy....”

“Catholics form a majority in Chile, although there are more and more Evangelicals and Pentacostals who irritate everyone because they have a direct understanding with God while everyone else must pass through the priestly bureaucracy.”

“For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.”

“Like my maestro, Juan Ribero, she believed that photography and painting are not competing arts but basically different: the painter interpets reality, and the camera captures it. In the former everything is fiction, while the second is the sum of the real plus the sensibility of the photographer. Ribero never allowed me sentimental or exhibitionist tricks-none of this arranging objects or models to look like paintings. He was the enemy of artificial compostion; he did not let me manipulate negatives or prints, and in general he scorned effects of spots or diffuse lighting: he wanted the honest and simple image, although clear in the most minute details.”

“This is the kind of detail that is forbidden in literature; in a book, no one would dare combine a full moon with Frank Sinatra. The problem with fiction is that it must seem credible, while reality seldom is.”

“Captain John Sommers joined his brother and sister in the library, "Do you remember Jacob Todd?-The cad who defrauded us with that yarn about missions in Tierra del Fuego? asked Jeremy Sommers.-The same... He changed his name. Now he calls himself Jacob Freemont, and he's a newspaperman in San Francisco.-Egad! So it is true that in the United States any scoundrel may begin a new life?-Jacob Todd paid for his offense several times over. I think it is splendid that there is a country where a man can have a second chance.”