~ During the night I had a bad case of the runs and, being ashamed to leave a souvenir in the pot under my bed, I climbed out on to the window ledge and gave up all of my pain to the night and blackness beyond. The next morning I looked out to see the effect and saw that two meters below lay a big sheet of tin where they were sun-drying their peaches; the added spectacle was impressive. We beat it fast.

~ It is at times like this, when a doctor is conscious of his complete powerlessness, that he longs for change: a change to prevent the injustice of a system in which only a month ago this poor woman was still earning her living as a waitress, wheezing and panting but facing life with dignity. In circumstances like this, individuals in poor families who can’t pay their way become surrounded by an atmosphere of barely disguised acrimony; they stop being father, mother, sister or brother and become a purely negative factor in the struggle for life and, consequently, a source of bitterness for the healthy members of the community who resent their illness as if it were a personal insult to those who have to support them.

~ The communism [...] was no more than a natural longing for something better, a protest against persistent hunger transformed into a love for this strange doctrine.

~ We will see whether one day, some miner will take up his pick in pleasure and go and poison his lungs with a conscious joy.

~ The biggest effort Chile should make is to shake its uncomfortable Yankee friend from its back, a task that for the moment at least is Herculean.

~ Alberto had reacted violently on seeing Civil Guard soldiers insulting an Indian woman who had come to bring food to her imprisoned husband. His reaction must have seemed completely alien to people who considered the Indians were no more than objects, who deserve to live but only just. After that, we fell out of favour.

~ [After watching a bullfight] Art, I see none; courage, a certain level; skill, not much; excitement, relative.

~ Well, it’s my duty to respond to the toast offered by Dr. Bresciani with something more than a conventional gesture. In our presently precarious state as travelers, we only have recourse to words and I would now like to use them to express my thanks, and those of my traveling compañero, to all of the staff the colony who, almost without knowing us, have given us this beautiful demonstration of their affection, celebrating my birthday as if it were an intimate celebration for one of your own. But there is something more. Within a few days we will be leaving Peruvian territory, so these words have the secondary intention of being a farewell, and I would like to stress our gratitude to all the people of this country, who have unfailingly shown us their warmest hospitality since we entered Peru via Tacna. I would also like to say something else, unrelated to the theme of this toast. Although our insignificance means we can’t be spokespeople for such a noble cause, we believe, and after this journey more firmly than ever, that the division of [Latin] America into unstable and illusory nations is completely fictional. We constitute a single mestizo race, which from Mexico to the Magellan Straits bears notable ethnographical similarities. And so, in an attempt to rid myself of the weight of small-minded provincialism, I propose a toast to Peru and to a United Latin America.

~ [A man was beaten.] The episode upset us a little because the poor man, apart from being homosexual and a first-rate bore, had been very nice to us...

~ The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of affinity with bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the Portuguese. And the two ancient races have now begun a hard life together, fraught with bickering and squabbles. Discrimination and poverty unite them in the daily fight for survival but their different ways of approaching life separate them completely: the black is indolent and a dreamer, spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations.

~ I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I would be with the people.

~