I'm attracted to soccer's capacity for beauty. When well played, the game is a dance with a ball.

The history of soccer is a sad voyage from beauty to duty. When the sport became an industry, the beauty that blossoms from the joy of play got torn out by its very roots.

The manager believes soccer is a science and the field a laboratory, but the genius of Einstein and the subtlety of Freud is not enough for the owners and the fans. They want a miracle worker like Our Lady of Lourdes, with the stamina of Gandhi.

I wanted to be a soccer player, and I became the best of the best, the number one, better than Maradona, better than Pele, and even better than Messi - but only at night, nighttime, during my dreams. When I wake up, I realized that I have wooden legs and that I'm doomed to be a writer.

History never really says goodbye. History says, 'See you later.'

The technocracy of professional sport has managed to impose a soccer of lightning speed and brute strength: a soccer that negates joy, kills fantasy and outlaws daring.

Less is always more. The best language is silence. We live in a time of a terrible inflation of words, and it is worse than the inflation of money.