Quotes that made me question my uniqueness in the world

Today as I was walking down my street, an old man in a Texas Rangers cap said "buenas tardes" from his window, an act of sheer courtesy towards an American-looking male in México, or any male in México, that took me by surprise. I turned around to look for where the sound had come from, and I was asked where I was from after about a minute of casual conversation.    
When my acquaintance recived the answer of "Los Estados Unidos", he immediately looked excited, something that also struck me as unusual, until he responded by saying that he was from Galveston, Texas.
It always gives me pleasure to encounter my paisanos around here, and this guy really, as is said in Spanish, "fell on me well". I asked what his profession was, and is turned out to be a literature professor at the UDLA, a university right near my house. Immediately excited by this development, I quickly replied that I too was fascinated by literature, and that I was thrille to have stumbled across a fellow enthusiast. He told me to wait there and that he would come down to say hello.

When we met at the gate of his fraccionamiento (think a gated community, but much more common in México, and less snobby), he shook my hand and introduced himself as Ed Simmen, and offered me two books, along with his card, to borrow. Random encounters define my life.

Anyway, when I got home, I started reading the book that HE had edited called Gringos in Mexico, a collection of short stories written by American authors who's time in México inspired their subsequent works, such as Stephen Crane, John Graves, and William Cullen Bryant, among others. I had never felt more understood in my entire life. Every single one of the authors, through interview or text, put to words what I have, up until this point, been unable to.

Here are some of my favorites:

"I went to México not to seek romance or to immerse myself in learning about the country, but, mainly because it was unconnected with things and people I knew and seemed a likely place wherein to start getting my head straightened out"

"México, for deep and ancient reasons, is an especially, emphatically foreign country, one that has always rebuffed easy familiarity from outsiders except of a surface sort"

"You can't possibly write about a country that you come into as a foreigner except in a very humble way. As a foreigner, you can't possibly try to point out the specialities or peculiarites of México"

"I was temporarily demolished by amoebae, and more or less hypotized and frightened by the splendid barbarousness of the country"

"I told them frequently, for a while at the beginning anyway, how things ought to be.What they must have thought, that assured, sophisticated Mexican family, of my sophomoric observations! I blush now, remembering; but the basic values, we all found - the Biblical, human values of decency and love and behavior - are no different in Mexico City than those in Wellsville, New York"

I'm way too excited to start this book.