“I prayed aloud, less to plead for divine favor than to intimidate the tribe with articulate speech.”

“Gradually, the concrete enigma I labored at disturbed me less than the generic enigma of a sentence written by a god. What type of sentence (I asked myself) will an absolute mind construct? I considered that even in the human languages there is no proposition that does not imply the entire universe: to say "the tiger" is to say the tigers that begot it, the deer and turtles devoured by it, the grass on which the deer fed, the earth that was mother to the grass, the heaven that gave birth to the earth. I considered that in the language of a god every word would enunciate that infinite concatenation of facts, and not in an implicit but in an explicit manner, and not progressively but instantaneously. In time, the notion of a divine sentence seemed puerile or blasphemous. A god, I reflected, ought to utter only a single word and in that word absolute fullness. No word uttered by him can be inferior to the universe or less than the sum total of time.”

“Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.”

“If I could live again my life,In the next – I’ll try,- to make more mistakes,I won’t try to be so perfect,I’ll be more relaxed,I’ll be more full – than I am now,In fact, I’ll take fewer things seriously,I’ll be less hygienic,I’ll take more risks,I’ll take more trips,I’ll watch more sunsets,I’ll climb more mountains,I’ll swim more rivers,I’ll go to more places – I’ve never been,I’ll eat more ice creams and less lima beans,I’ll have more real problems – and less imaginary ones,I was one of those people who liveprudent and prolific lives -each minute of his life,Of course that I had moments of joy – but,if I could go back I’ll try to have only good moments,If you don’t know – that’s what life is made of,Don’t lose the now!I was one of those who never goes anywherewithout a thermometer,without a hot-water bottle,and without an umbrella and without a parachute,If I could live again – I will travel light,If I could live again – I’ll try to work bare feetat the beginning of spring till the end of autumn,I’ll ride more carts,I’ll watch more sunrises and play with more children,If I have the life to live – but now I am 85,- and I know that I am dying …”

“Es curiosa la suerte del escritor. Al principio es barroco, vanidosamente barroco, y al cabo de los años puede lograr, si son favorables los astros, no la sencillez, que no es nada, si no la modesta y secreta complejidad.”

“Hell had become, over the years, a wearisome speculation. Even its proselytizers have neglected it, abandoning the poor, but serviceable, human allusion which the ecclesiastic fires of the Holy Office once had in this world: a temporal torment, of course, but one that was not unworthy, within its terrestrial limitations, of being a metaphor for the immortal, for the perfect pain without destruction that the objects of divine wrath will forever endure. Whether or not this hypothesis is satisfactoy, an increasing lassitude in the propaganda of the institution is indisputable. (Do not be alarmed; I use propaganda here not in its commercial but rather in its Catholic genealogy: a congregation of cardinals.)”

“Before unearthing this letter, I had questioned myself about the ways in which a book can be infinite. I could think of nothing other than a cyclic volume, a circular one. A book whose last page was identical with the first, a book which had the possibility of continuing indefinitely.”