I know the first film I ever saw - it must have been some time in 1924, when I was six or so... was Black Beauty. About a stallion. I still recall a sequence with fire. It was burning, I remember that vividly. And I remember too how it excited me, and how afterwards we bought the book of Black Beauty and how I learned the chapter on the fire by heart - at that time I still hadn't learned to read.

When I was young, I was extremely scared of dying, but now I think it a very, very wise arrangement. It's like a light that is extinguished. Not very much to m…

In our family we had a well-to-do aunt who always gave us magnificent Christmas presents. She was so much part of the family that we even included her in our p…

I don't want to produce a work of art that the public can sit and suck aesthetically:. I want to give them a blow in the small of the back, to scorch their ind…

No poet is ever completely lost. He has the secret of his childhood safe with him, like some secret cave in which he can kneel. And, when we read his poetry, w…

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. (p 1)

The past has a terror and fascination and a beauty beyond almost anything else. We are looking at the dead, and they move and grin and wave at us; it's an almo…