“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.”
“You obeyed, once, because you thought it would make you safe. He showed you—again and again, unrelentingly, he would not let you pretend otherwise—that if obedience did not make one safe from the Guardians or the nodes or the lynchings or the breeding or the disrespect, then what was the point? The game was too rigged to bother playing.”
“Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Physics, and the Royal Society of London. His most recent award was a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2015. He is the author of From Eternity to Here and”
“My advice to anyone who wishes to write is to know all the very best literature by heart, and ignore the rest as completely as possible.”
“Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth;”
“Hey, just be grateful I’m old. When an Arcadian first starts time-walking, we only have about a three percent chance of success. I once ended up on Pluto. (Sebastian)
Are you serious? (Channon)
They’re not kidding about it being the coldest planet. (Sebastian)”
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