El deseo es la llama de luz que no se apaga, el hilo que conduce en el bosque encantado, el pájaro que canta en la oscuridad.

Our existence began to materialize in another part of the city, in the Colonial Offices, in the Stock Exchange, in the Admiralty. There, through a strange alchemy of civilization, Button and I assumed our bodies, we became real, we belonged somewhere on the globe that was perfectly situated and transformed us into skins, oil, numbers.

¿Qué es el tiempo? ¿Qué son mil años? Un parpadeo de los dioses.

Power engenders the evil-minded who ill-treat the needy in all parts of the world.

God is the ace up the sleeve of illogic.

For the one who writes it . . . a story is like a mirror.

For whom, I asked myself innocently, were the riches and dominions that the English conquered and held on to at any price in the most remote corners of the planet? The neighborhoods which succeeded one another interminably down the narrow cobbled streets were not inhabited by the beneficiaries of those enterprises.