Many of Juan Diego's demons had been his childhood companions - he knew them so well, they were as familiar as friends.

Behind every journey is a reason

DREAMS EDIT THEMSELVES; DREAMS are ruthless with details. Common sense does not dictate what remains, or is not included, in a dream. A two-minute dream can feel like forever.

I really like the sex in your novels, Dorothy told him. I like how you do it. I like it better, Miriam said to him, giving her daughter an all-knowing look. I have the perspective to know what really...

When the deranged rooster crowed a third time, his crowing was cut off mid-squawk. There, that does it, Miriam said. No more heralding of a false dawn, no more untruthful messengers.

Writers who have any audience have more readers than they know. Juan Diego was more famous than he thought.

Wasn't this the point Juan Diego had made repeatedly? Women readers kept fiction alive-here was another one. When Juan Diego had used Spanish in crying out the scholastic's name, the Chinese girl knew...

I'm not a fortune-teller!" Lupe said, but Juan Diego didn't translate this. "The woman you want is Soledad," Vargas said to Edward Bonshaw. "What woman? I don't want a woman!" the new missionary...

But Brother Pepe put reading on a pedestal; he was a Jesuit because the Jesuits had made him a reader and introduced him to Jesus, not necessarily in that order. It was best not to ask Pepe if reading...

That poor girl wasn't a girl," Señor Eduardo said; he'd glanced once at Lupe, asleep in his lap, just to be sure she was still sleeping. "That poor girl was Flor

And Clark clearly knew and disapproved of El Nido. {A nido could be a nest, a den, a hole, a haunt.}

He'd complained to his doctor. "The beta-blockers are blocking my memories!" Juan Diego cried. "They are stealing my childhood-they are robbing my dreams!" To his doctor, all this hysteria meant was...

No es buen momento para un terremoto," Lupe used to say. "It's not a good moment for an earthquake.

Vargas isn't supposed to be faithful to a woman he hasn't slept with! Vargas only wants to sleep with Dr. Gomez, Lupe.

Not even a surprise

Yet no litany of sexually transmitted diseases was likely to scare Edward Bonshaw away; sexual attraction isn't strictly scientific.

{As a novelist, he was a little fussy about chronological order, a tad old-fashioned.}

The past was where he lived most confidently, and with the surest sense of knowing who he was-not only as a novelist.

His childhood, and the people he'd encountered there-the ones who'd changed his life, or who'd been witnesses to what had happened to him at that crucial time-were what Juan Diego had instead of...

The good gringo asked Lupe if she forgave him for sleeping with her mother. Yes, Lupe said, but we can't ever get married.

Clothes, whips, reading material, the customs officer had summarized, in Spanish and English, to the young American. Just the bare essentials! Edward Bonshaw

{As a novelist, he was always looking ahead, too.}

Just give me the antibiotic," Esperanza said. "Of course I'll be infected again! I'm a prostitute.

What woman wants to hear someone say what her husband is thinking? What guy is going to be happy hearing what's on his wife's mind?

The day women stop reading-that's the day the novel dies! the

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

Well, lion tamers are probably difficult to live with-I suppose there's no small amount of testosterone involved in taming lions, Vargas said, shrugging.

Women readers kept fiction alive-here was another one.

Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge.

Melville's Moby-Dick