I don't read poetry for pleasure. I read to be terrified in a way. And people who terrify me from their size and the grandeur of their imagination now are people like Pasternak and Neruda, a lot of Latin-American poets, Lowell - very few English poets - Ted Hughes a little...very few English poets now in fact (1968)

We [as Latinxs] got to be there representing, explaining, and translating…It’s the only way we are going to have people come together.

We witness a strange inversion: on the one hand, the endeavor to turn the social contract into a less calculating and more feeling connection among its members; on the other hand, the endeavor to turn the erotic relationship into a contractual one.

...most people find it easier to think about their own health than that of the planet, so emphasising the health benefits of low-carbon activities like cycling instead of driving, or insulating draughty homes, might be a better way to go.

My mother would really make me notice the world of women, and in Latin America they have a kind of magic in that they make society function in every kind of intimate way, as well as in the bigger picture.

By relating an ancient instance of white colonization in a dark subcontinent, it confirmed the colonial worldview.

Faced with the urgency of the Latin American situation, the Church denounces as insufficient those partial and limited measures which amount only to palliatives and in the long run actually consolidate an exploitative system.

But African languages refused to die. They would not simply go to the way of Latin to become the fossils for linguistic archaeology to dig up, classify, and argue about the international conferences.

You must be ever vigilant to discover the unifying Truth behind all the scintillating variety.

Someone is saying we are contemplating sending aid to help the Pakistani refugees. I hope to hell we’re not.

Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body