Having confronted the world with little except a battered typewriter and a certain resilience, he can now take posthumous credit for having got the three great questions of the 20th century essentially ‘right.’ Orwell was...

Some people flip condos and make millions. Your boyfriend couldn’t even flip burgers and make minimum wage.

Spanish rain,A maiden’s dress,Apothecary pillsAnd ancient thrills;Melancholy killsA girl’s caress.(—Roman Payne; Valencia, Spain, November 2nd 2012)

I can remember when I was a bit of an ETA fan myself. It was in 1973, when a group of Basque militants assassinated Adm. Carrero Blanco. The admiral was a stone-faced secret police chief,...

Are you a communist?””No I am an anti-fascist””For a long time?””Since I have understood fascism.

Isabel, remember we used to talk about a honeymoon in Spain?””Of course.””It woulda been a blast. I took a walk last night. Two in the morning, it felt like two in the afternoon. Traffic. People...

And therefore I am come amongst you at this time, not as for my recreation or sport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all;...

To Judaism Christians ascribe the glory of having been the first religion to teach a pure monotheism. But monotheism existed long before the Jews attained to it. Zoroaster and his earliest followers were monotheists, dualism...

It was in Spain that [my generation] learned that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own recompense. It is...

The vicar’s handshake was warm and reassuring, but shaking hands with Mavis was like clutching a bunch of dead twigs.

Nature and man are opposed in Spain.

The worst thing a government can do now in Spain is to do nothing.

The problem with the world is that no one knows how to shit anymore!

It’s very kind of you to take us in,” said the vicar, smiling. “We’re so sorry if we’ve put you out at all.” “Not at all!” I said, lying through my teeth.

Cubism is a part of the daily life in Spain, it is in Spanish architecture. The architecture of other countries aleays follows the line of the landscape . . . but Spanish architecture always cuts...

Kotov looked like an abandoned statue on the beach in the Plaza de Cataluna. The spring was at is height and the warm un bathed the city. The adviser, with his face slightly raised, was...

We speak the ebonics of Spanish,

We had never eaten our own chickens but we delighted in eating their eggs. No matter how hot the summer became, they always presented us with eggs, which I thought was very generous of them,...

Mr. Fizzlebush.” He will need his litter box changed daily, the finest dry cat food, and fourteen bottles of your finest champagne (he is royalty, after all). His Majesty Juan Carlos is not to be...

Freedom, or individual liberty, was a basic premise of the Spanish anarchist tradition. “Individual sovereignty” is a prime tenet of most anarchist writing; the free development of one’ s individual potential is one of the...

You aren’t happy,” Estela says.”I can’t be happy,” I say.”Look at me, Kenzie.””I’m looking at you, Estela.””Do you know your own heart?””I don’t know anything.””Go,” she says, “and think. And don’t come back until you...

All my life is in Spain. I will stay.

Todas las novedades que la bullen a V. en esa cabecita revolucionaria… serán muy buenas en otros países de Europa o del Nuevo Mundo; lo serán tal vez aquí en mil novecientos ochenta; lo que...

We all have our place in this diverse Spain.

As well as writing, 2004 saw my first attempt at wine making: the elixir of life. Unfortunately, my effort tasted more like the elixir of death.

What freedom to be tied up, and still have the capability of ignoring ridiculous, silly conversations.

Don Benicio no se atrevía ni a respirar, hasta que poco a poco fue convirtiéndose en un sumiso, en un calzonazos, y se demostró una vez más que el matrimonio es incompatible con la dignidad...

I live where I would like to live. I live in Majorca, Spain, and I am not sure there are better places.

a useful idiot for Kremlin propaganda” by his former idolators; to see the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union regarded with fear and suspicion by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (which...

Spain is 4/5ths pain and 1/5th S. I drank that fifth, and I loved S.

Dans une guerre il n’y a ni vainqueurs ni vaincus: rien que des victimes.

In The Captive Mind, written in the early 1950s, Czeslaw Milosz wrote that Eastern European intellectuals, reading 1984 in clandestine editions, were amazed to find that its author had never visited the Soviet Union. How,...

[While the new passports are a great step,] unfortunately, the sophistication level is not as high as it should be, … The possibility of people coming in from the 27 [VWP] countries Spain, Germany, France,...

To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into...

Recorrí pasillos y galerías en espiral pobladas por cientos, miles de tomos que parecían saber más acerca de mí que yo de ellos. Al poco, me asaltó la idea de que tras la cubierta de...

Barcelona are my favourite team in Spain, let’s put it that way.

I likened her to the slender PSYCHÉ and judged that the perfection of her face ennobled everything unclean around her: The dusty hems of her bunched-up skirt, the worn straps of her nightshirt; the blackened...