“As their shoulders touched, the riverboat was no longer earthbound. With only the two of them aboard, it lifted into the sky, navigating a sea of white billows. The boy was the figurehead beneath the bowsprit, eyes searching for the way. Neftali was the paddle wheel, moving them forward as one ancient spirit.”

“The words he had written wiggled off the page and escaped from the drawer. The letters stacked themselves, one on top of the other. Their towers reached higher and higher until they stood majestic and tall, surrounding Neftali in a city of promise.”

“I am poetry,surrounding the dreamer,Ever present,I capture the spirit,enslavethe reluctant pen,and becomethe breathon the writer's only road.”

“How many others were walking around and not even knowing that someone far away cared for them? Imagine all that love floating in the air, waiting to land on someone's life!”

“Pablo Neruda's poems tramped through the mud [with the fieldworker]...knocked at the doors of mansions...sat at the table of the baker...The shopkeeper leaned over his counter and read them to his customers...The poems became books that people passed from hand to hand. The books traveled over fences. and bridges. and across borders. soaring from continent to continent. until he had passed thousands of gifts through a hole in the fence to a multitude of people in every corner of the world.”

“The needle rocked awkwardly and at the end of her beginning rows, Isabel held up her work to show Esperanza. "Mine is all crooked!"Esperanza smiled and reached over and gently pulled the yarn, unraveling the uneven stitches. Then she looked into Isabel's trusting eyes and said, "Do not ever be afraid to start over.”

“... and her name was Freedom.”