Should hostilities once break out between Japan and the United States, it is not enough that we take Guam and the Philippines, nor even Hawaii and San Francisco. We would have to march into Washington and sign the treaty in the White House.

I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.

I wonder what Heaven must think of the people down here on this small black speck in the universe that is earth, or of all their talk about the last few years-which are no more than a flash compared with eternity-being 'a time of emergency." It's really ridiculous.

Japan has always regarded the aircraft carrier as one of the most offensive of armaments.

Today, as chief Of the guardians of the seas Of the land of the dawn, I gaze up with awe At the rising sun!

Anyone who has seen the auto factories in Detroit and the oil fields in Texas knows that Japan lacks the national power for a naval race with America.

Never tell anyone outside my staff that the Submarine Force and the First Air Fleet were responsible for the failure at Midway. The failure at Midway was mine.

As long as tides of war are in our favor, the United States will never stop fighting. As a consequence, the war will continue for several years, during which materiel will be exhausted, vessels and arms will be damaged, and they can be replaced only with great difficulties.

“As my Popo used to say, life is a tapestry we weave day by day with threads of different colors, some heavy and dark, others thin and bright, all the threads having their uses. The stupid things I did are already in the tapestry, indelible, but I’m not going to be weighed down by them till I die. What’s done is done; I have to look ahead.” 

“Perhaps we are in this world to search for love, find it and lose it, again and again. With each love, we are born anew, and with each love that ends we collect a new wound. I am covered with proud scars.” 

“Silence before being born, silence after death: life is nothing but noise between two unfathomable silences.” 

“You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend, or not.” 

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.

“I must not get ahead of myself. If I do not narrate the events of my life with rigor and harmony, I will lose my way.” 

“Of all fragrances, the sweetest is that of virtue.” 

“Affection is like the noonday sun; it does not need the presence of another to be manifest.” 

“Sometimes I have these premonitions and I don't forget them, so I will be prepared when they happen.” 

“I'd realized that in writing happiness is useless-without suffering there is no story.” 

“She felt that everything was made of glass, as fragile as a sigh” 

“You only have what you give. It’s by spending yourself that you become rich.” 

“She intended to swallow the world and he lived crushed by reality.” 

“It’s easy to judge others when we are not going through the same thing.” 

Oh, you should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.