“Consider the stars. Among them are no passions, no wars. They know neither love nor hatred. Did man but emulate the stars, would not his soul become clear and radiant as they are? But man's spirit draws him like a moth to the ephemera of this world, and in their heat he is consumed entire.”
― Sarah Monette, quote from Mélusine
“Sacred bleeding fuck,” I said, because, I mean its one thing to know your crazy hocus brother sees ghosts, and a whole different thing when you find out they’re telling him bedtime stories.”
― Sarah Monette, quote from Mélusine
“Well fuck me sideways 'til I cry”
― Sarah Monette, quote from Mélusine
“I miss my fox-headed brother. Keeper”
― Sarah Monette, quote from Mélusine
“And besides, the thing about committing yourself to a lie is that mostly you end up in twice the trouble, 'cause truth is like a whirlwind and you can't keep it in a box.”
― Sarah Monette, quote from Mélusine
Sarah Monette
Born place: in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, The United States
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“Civilizations are the generations of the racial soul. As family-rearing, and then writing, bound the generations together, handing down the lore of the dying to the young, so print and commerce and a thousand ways of communication may bind the civilizations together, and preserve for future cultures all that is of value for them in our own. Let us, before we die, gather up our heritage, and offer it to our children.”
― Will Durant, quote from Our Oriental Heritage
“A cop? You married a bloody cop?"
"I married a bloody criminal," Eve muttered, "but nobody ever thinks of that.”
― J.D. Robb, quote from Vengeance in Death
“A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.
Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted! ”
― quote from The Dhammapada
“So...what are you working on now?"
“Right now, an essay about Don Quixote.”
“One of my favorite books.”
“Mine too.”
“What’s the gist?”
“It has to do with the authorship of the books.”
“Is there any question?”
“I mean the book inside the book Cervantes wrote, the one he imagined he was writing.”
“Ah.”
“Cervantes claims he is not the author, that the original text was in Arabic.”
“Right. It’s an attack on make-believe, so he must claim it was real.”
“Precisely. Therefore, the story has to be written by an eyewitness yet Cid Hamete Benengeli, the acknowledged author, never makes an appearance. So who is he? Sancho Panza is of course the witness – illiterate, but with a gift for language. He dictated the story to the barber and the priest, Don Quixote’s friends. They had the manuscript translated into Arabic. Cervantes found the translation and had it rendered back into Spanish. The idea was to hold up a mirror to Don Quixote’s madness so that when he finally read the book himself, he would see the error of his ways. But Don Quixote, in my view, was no mad. He only pretended to be. He engineered the collaboration, and the translation from Arabic back into Spanish. I like to imagine Cervantes hiring Don Quixote in disguise to decipher the story of Don Quixote.”
“But why did Quixote go to such lengths?”
“He wanted to test the gullibility of man. To what extent would people tolerate blasphemies, lies, and nonsense if they gave them amusement? The answer: to any extent. For the book is still amusing us today. That’s finally all anyone wants out of a book. To be amused.”
― Paul Auster, quote from City of Glass
“[The theory of universal gravitation] is not cast-iron. No theory is, and there is always room for improvement. Isn't that so? Science is constructed out of approximations that gradually approach the truth. . . Well, that means all theories are subject to constant testing and modification, doesn't it? And if it eventually turns out that they're not quite close enough to the truth, they need to be replaced by something that's closer. Right?”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Nightfall
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