“It’s almost always sadder to stay than to depart”
“As ilhas são lugares de solidão e nunca isso é tão nítido como quando partem os que apenas vieram de passagem e ficam no cais, a despedir-se, os que vão permanecer. Na hora da despedida, é quase sempre mais triste ficar do que partir e, numa ilha, isso marca uma diferença fundamental, como se houvesse duas espécies de seres humanos: os que vivem na ilha e os que chegam e partem.”
“Luís Bernardo deixou-se ficar até ao fim, sozinho, mais sozinho do que nunca, como se toda a ilha se tivesse despovoado de repente e, por entre os sinais de abandono e de solidão, ele buscasse os sinais da passagem de Ann para não morrer de loucura.”
“Não conseguiu impedir-se de pensar se alguma vez, entre uma caçada e um concerto, D. Carlos se teria lembrado da missão que lhe confiara e do que ela poderia significar nas relações com Inglaterra.”
“Que mais de grandioso poderá levar você da vida?" A resposta é esta: deixei aqui a minha vida; que mais de grandioso poderia eu dar a El-Rei?”
“Não sei se sou eu que vencerei as ilhas, ou elas que me vencerão a mim.”
“Pese a muitas consciências instaladas em maus hábitos ou em maus princípios, a razão porque me ofereci para defender dois réus indefesos e a razão porque estou aqui como governador das ilhas é uma e a mesma: porque eu, e muita gente comigo, entende que chegou a altura de Portugal ser, não apenas um país colonizador, mas também um país civilizador. Que podemos e devemos colher os frutos do nosso trabalho e da nossa riqueza colonial que devemos aos nossos antepassados, mas que nada nos desobriga de trazer em troca o progresso e a civilização.”
“Todas as éticas são evolutivas: o que hoje é normal, amanhã será horrendo e o que hoje é crime, amanhã será banal.”
“For obvious reasons, I never told you about my notebook, with a cover as green as mansions long ago, which I use as a commonplace book, a phrase which here means 'place where I have collected passages from some of the most important books I have read.”
“Nick did not want to go in there now. He felt a reaction against deep wading with the water deepening up under his armpits, to hook big trout in places impossible to land them. In the swamp the banks were bare, the big cedars came together overhead, the sun did not come through, except in patches; in the fast deep water, in the half light, the fishing would be tragic. In the swamp fishing was a tragic adventure. Nick did not want it. He did not want to go down the stream any farther today. He”
“Who wants to feel everything everyone else feels all the time?”
“The "feminine" woman is forever static and childlike. She is like the ballerina in an old-fashioned music box, her unchanging features tiny and girlish, her voice tinkly, her body stuck on a pin, rotating in a spiral that will never grow.”
“(While interviewing at the Hunan women's prison:)
'I have lived with several men, and let them amuse themselves with me. Because of that, I have been sent to two labour reeducation camps and been sentenced to prison twice. (...) When people curse me for having no shame, I don't get angry. All the Chinese care about is "face", but they don't understand how their faces are linked to the rest of their bodies.”
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