"What the United States does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is understand others."

“was a break with the past to recover the past. We were trying to deny we had an Indian and a black and a Spanish past. The Mexican Revolution accepted all heritages. It allowed Mexico to be mestizo.”

“The facade of the Conquest, severe yet jocund, with one foot in the dead Old World and the other in the New.”

“Can you imagine me coming to this country to blow up a post office? I told them, "My bombs are my books.”

“The North American world blinds us with its energy; we cannot see ourselves, we must see you.”

“I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.”

“If the Soviet Union can give up the Brezhnev Doctrine for the Sinatra Doctrine, the United States can give up the James Monroe Doctrine for the Marilyn Monroe Doctrine: Let's all go to bed wearing the perfume we like best.”