So many stories, and to choose which ones to tell and how to tell them. The words, they will tap me on the shoulder and they will speak to me: 'Tell me! Tell me!' The stories choose me.

Always in all my books I'm trying to reveal or help to reveal the hidden greatness of the small, of the little, of the unknown - and the pettiness of the big.

The human murder by poverty in Latin America is secret. Every year, without making a sound, three Hiroshima bombs explode over communities that have become accustomed to suffering with clenched teeth.

I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead, 'A pretty move, for the love of God.' And when good football happens, I give thanks for the miracle, and I don't give a damn which team or country performs it.

History never really says goodbye. History says, 'See you later.'

I’m attracted to soccer’s capacity for beauty. When well played, the game is a dance with a ball.

My language is a feel-thinking language, feeling and thinking at once, that is why it is a celebration of life, and at once it is a denunciation of everything that is not allowed in life to be real life, it’s plenitude.

The purpose of torture is not getting information. It’s spreading fear.

I can’t sleep. There is a woman stuck between my eyelids. I would tell her to get out if I could. But there is a woman stuck in my throat.

I don’t believe in charity. I believe in solidarity.