“I asked this question: How can I think about my brain when it’s my brain doing the thinking? So is this brain pretending to be me thinking about it?”
― E.L. Doctorow, quote from Andrew's Brain
“Where most people live, most of us, imagining it to be the real sunlit world when it is only a cave lit by the flickering fires of illusion.”
― E.L. Doctorow, quote from Andrew's Brain
“One evening he appeared with an infant in his arms at the door of his ex-wife, Martha. Because Briony, his lovely young wife after Martha, had died. Of what? We’ll get to that. I can’t do this alone, Andrew said, as Martha stared at him from the open doorway. It happened to have been snowing that night, and Martha was transfixed by the soft creature-like snowflakes alighting on Andrew’s NY Yankees hat brim. Martha was like that, enrapt by the peripheral things as if setting them to music. Even in ordinary times, she was slow to respond, looking at you with her large dark rolling protuberant eyes. Then the smile would come, or the nod, or the shake of the head. Meanwhile the heat from her home drifted through the open door and fogged up Andrew’s eyeglasses. He stood there behind his foggy lenses like a blind man in the snowfall and was without volition when at last she reached out, gently took the swaddled infant from him, stepped back, and closed the door in his face.”
― E.L. Doctorow, quote from Andrew's Brain
“Happiness consists of living in the dailyness of life and not knowing how happy you are. True happiness comes of not knowing you’re happy, it’s an animal serenity, something between contentment and joy, a steadiness of the belonged self in the world.”
― E.L. Doctorow, quote from Andrew's Brain
“It’s a kind of jail, the brain’s mind. We’ve got these mysterious three-pound brains and they jail us.”
― E.L. Doctorow, quote from Andrew's Brain
“Consciousness without world is impossible, just as there is no sight without the light to see by. Is that your objection,”
― E.L. Doctorow, quote from Andrew's Brain
“Happiness consists of living in the dailiness of life and not knowing how happy you are. True happiness comes of not knowing you're happy.”
― E.L. Doctorow, quote from Andrew's Brain
“We have to be wary of our brains. They make our decisions before we make them. They lead us to still waters. They renounceth free will. And it gets weirder: If you slice a brain down the middle, the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere will operate self-sufficiently and not know what the other is doing.”
― E.L. Doctorow, quote from Andrew's Brain
“It was as if the wars they were conducting were to be symbolized in their own relationships. I thought how contention makes us human. How every form of it is practiced religiously, from gentlemanly debate to rape and pillage, from dirty political attacks to assassinations. Our nighttime street fights outside of bars, our slapping arguments in plush bedrooms, our murderous mutterings in the divorce courts. We had parents who beat their children, schoolyard bullies, career-climbing killers in ties and suits, drivers cutting one another off, people pushing one another through the subway doors, nations making war, dropping bombs, swarming onto beaches, the daily military coups, the endless disappearances, the dispossessed dying in their tent camps, the ethnic cleansing crusades, drug wars, terrorist murders, and all violence in every form countenanced somewhere by some religion or other … and for its entertainment politicidal, genocidal, suicidal humanity attending its beloved kick-boxing matches, and cockfights, or losing its paychecks on the blackjack felt and then going back to work undercutting the competition, scamming, ponzi-ing, poisoning … and the impassioned lovers of their times contending in their own little universe of sex, one turgidly wanting it, the other wincingly refusing it.”
― E.L. Doctorow, quote from Andrew's Brain
“truth is, I just shrug and soldier on. As kind as I am, as well-meaning and helpful as I try to be, I have no feelings finally, for good or ill. In the depths of my being, no matter what happens, I am left cold, impenetrable to remorse, to grief, to happiness, though I can pretend well enough even to the point of fooling myself. I am trying to say I am finally, terribly, unfeeling. My soul resides in a still, deep, beautiful, emotionless, calm cold pond of silence.”
― E.L. Doctorow, quote from Andrew's Brain
“The genome of every human cell has memory. You know what that means? As evolved beings we have in our genes memories of the far past, of long-ago generations, memories of experiences not our own.”
― E.L. Doctorow, quote from Andrew's Brain
E.L. Doctorow
Born place: in Bronx, New York City, New York, The United States
Born date January 6, 1931
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“In the other room Rateau was looking at the canvas, completely blank, in the center of which Jonas had merely written in very small letters a word that could be made out, but without any certainty as to whether it should be read 'solitary' or 'solidary'.”
― Albert Camus, quote from Exile and the Kingdom
“I never meant that," [Anyan] said, eventually. "I've never thought you were pathetic and I don't consider you half of anything." His voice was sad, the tone familiar yet unidentifiable that I wanted to scream. "You're Jane," he concluded, "and that's enough." He looked over at me, his face shadowed but his eyes still visible.”
― Nicole Peeler, quote from Tempest Rising
“Toda historia tiene dos caras. Si interpretas el papel del "malo", nunca piensas en ti mismo como si fueras malo. Lo que ocurre es que los demás... a menudo no comprenden tus razones.”
― Lesley Livingston, quote from Tempestuous
“The English language lacks the words to mourn an absence. For the loss of a parent, grandparent, spouse, child or friend, we have all manner of words and phrases, some helpful some not. Still we are conditioned to say something, even if it is only “I’m sorry for your loss.” But for an absence, for someone who was never there at all, we are wordless to capture that particular emptiness. For those who deeply want children and are denied them, those missing babies hover like silent ephemeral shadows over their lives. Who can describe the feel of a tiny hand that is never held?”
― Laura Bush, quote from Spoken from the Heart
“In recent decades, Ireland in general and Dublin in particular, have been very fortunate in the quality of the historical attention they have received. During the extensive research required to write this book, I have been privileged to work with some of Ireland’s most distinguished scholars, who have generously shared their knowledge with me and corrected my texts. Their kind contributions are mentioned in the Acknowledgements. Thanks to the scholarly work of the last quarter century, there has been a reevaluation of certain aspects of Ireland’s history; and as a result, the story that follows may contain a number of surprises for many readers. I have provided a few additional notes in the Afterword at the end of this volume for those curious to know more.”
― Edward Rutherfurd, quote from The Princes of Ireland
The Aftermath
Pocket Apocalypse
Fim da Eternidade
Before We Were Stran...
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