One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.

The only power poor people have is their hunger.

The school-children were in their uniforms. A cock crowed repeatedly. Mum got her tray together. I was ready for school. Mum went down the street, swaying, moving a little sleepily, with one more burden added to her life. She was merely a detail in the poverty of our area.

Ghetto-dwellers are the great fantasists. There was an extraordinary vibrancy there, an imaginative life. When you are that poor, all you’ve got left is your belief in the imagination.

They made me think. Everything has to fight to live. Rats work very hard. If we are not careful they will inherit the earth.

He danced there like an overturned centipede.

When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity’s chief instrument.

That’s good. Life is full of riddles that only the dead can answer,” was Dad’s reply.

The antimony on their features was set on silvery fire by the intensity of the moon. And their bodies, solid and quivering and half-naked, were like ancient memories of a mystical time without boundaries when it was possible to enter the consciousness of a cornseed and foretell the harvest to come.

If You Look Too Deeply Everything Breaks Your Heart.