“As much as I live I shall not imitate them or hate myself for being different to them”

“I hate them for not being in pain like me, hate them for being able to enjoy themselves. Hate myself for feeling that way.”

“Children are amazing beings and it is we who shall try to imitate them and not the other way around.”

“If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.”

“I hated him. I hated them all. They made me hate myself even more than I already did.”

“I felt sick with hatred then for my own people. If you had asked me why I hated them, I might have said that I hated them for being so loud and for being so drunk. But now I believe I hated them for suddenly being my people, not just other people. In the United States, it is very easy for me to forget that the people around me are my people. It is easy, with all our divisions, to think of myself as an outsider in my own country. I have been taught, and I have learned well, I realize now, to think of myself as distinctly different from other white folks - more educated, more articulate, less crude. But in Mexico these distinctions became as meaningless to me as they should have always been.”