“Fogeydom is the last bastion of the bore and reminiscence is its anthem. It is futile to want the old days back, but that doesn't mean one should ignore the lessons of the visitable past.”

“Things change, people change, but that doesn't mean you should forget the past.”

“The elite is ignorant of the favela because it doesn't want to see, and the favela doesn't know the rest of Brazil because it is deprived of the means and the opportunity.”

“We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.”

“But this was what happened when you didn't want to visit and confront the past: the past starts visiting and confronting you.”

“Show me a person who doesn't have a past and I'll show you a boring bastard”

“Just because something doesn't last forever, it doesn't mean it wasn't meaningful while it did last. It doesn't mean it wasn't important.”

“Even god doesn't propose to judge a man till his last days, why should you and I?”

“People search for the meaning of life, but this is the easy question: we are born into a world that presents us with many millennia of collected knowledge and information, and all our predecessors ask of us is that we not waste our brief life ignoring the past only to rediscover or reinvent its lessons badly.”

“If the meaning of life is futility, human longevity loses its luster.”