If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family...

There is no self-knowledge but an historical one. No one knows what he himself is who does not know his fellow men, especially the most prominent one of the community, the master's master, the genius of the age.

Religion can emerge in all forms of feeling: here wild anger, there the sweetest pain here consuming hatred, there the childlike smile of serene humility.

Art and works of art do not make an artist sense and enthusiasm and instinct do.

As you age naturally, your family shows more and more on your face. If you deny that, you deny your heritage.

I was born in ancient times, at the end of the world, in a patriarchal Catholic and conservative family. No wonder that by age five I was a raging feminist - although the term had not reached Chile yet, so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me.

My inspiration was my mom. She's a great cook, and she still cooks, and we still banter back and forth about cooking. Growing up in a mostly Portuguese community, food was important and the family table was extremely important. At a very young age I understood that.

In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century.

Every age has its own poetry in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

At the age when Bengali youth almost inevitably writes poetry, I was listening to European classical music.

In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.

When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.