Quotes from Terra Nostra

Carlos Fuentes ·  785 pages

Rating: (840 votes)


“Incredible the animal that first dreamed of another animal.”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra


“Normality; show me normality, señor caballero, and I will show you an exception to the abnormal order of the universe; show me a normal event and I shall call it miraculous because it is normal.”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra


“Since I neither want not can influence the events of the world, my mission is to preserve the internal integrity and equilibrium of my mind; that will be in which the manor in which I recover the purity of the original act; I shall be my own citadel, and to it I shall retire to protect myself against a hostile and corrupt world. I shall be my own citadel and, within it, my own and only citizen.”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra


“The mystery of other individuals, señor caballero, is ordinarily grief we neither share nor understand.”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra


“all that was left to me was certain images and all of them spoke to me of the collapse of a cruel world and the slow construction in its stead of another world, equally cruel.”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra



“Power does not alter a man's character. It merely reveals it.”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra


“But reason... tells us that merely with repetition the extraordinary becomes ordinary, and only briefly abandoned, what had once passed for a common and ordinary occurrence becomes a portent:”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra


“It is true that every mountain has four faces, and one tends to know but one.
― Carlos Fuentes, Terra Nostra”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra


“He himself felt defeated because he was fighting against something he did not hate, because he did not understand the fratricidal hatred between the sons of Araby and Israel, and because he loved and knew and appreciated and wanted to save the merits of their cultures, although not the cruelty of their powers; he knew and loved the fountains and the gardens and the patios and high towers of al-Andalus, the nature that has been made more beautiful by man for man's pleasure, not for his mortification.”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra


About the author

Carlos Fuentes
Born place: in Panama City, Panama
Born date November 11, 1928
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Pravda, as you know, means ‘truth,’ and Izvestia means ‘news,’ and I’ve heard it said that there is no news in the Truth and no truth in the News.”
― Nelson DeMille, quote from The Charm School


“Our past may shape us, but it doesn't define us.”
― Alyson Noel, quote from Night Star


“Being in love is…anxious,” he said. “Wanting to please, worrying that she will see me as I really am. But wanting to be known. That is…you’re naked, moaning in the dark, no dignity at all…I wanted her to see me and to love me even though she knew everything I am, and I knew her.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, quote from Her Fearful Symmetry


“Food that good deserved undisturbed digestion”
― Chloe Neill, quote from Hard Bitten


“The daughter of Lithuanian immigrants, born with a precocious scientific intellect and a thirst for chemical knowledge, Elion had completed a master's degree in chemistry from New York University in 1941 while teaching high school science during the day and preforming her research for her thesis at night and on the weekends. Although highly qualified, talented, and driven, she had been unable to find a job in an academic laboratory. Frustrated by repeated rejections, she had found a position as a supermarket product supervisor. When Hitchings found Trudy Elion, who would soon become on of the most innovative synthetic chemists of her generation (and a future Nobel laureate), she was working for a food lab in New York, testing the acidity of pickles and the color of egg yolk going into mayonnaise. Rescued from a life of pickles and mayonnaise…”
― Siddhartha Mukherjee, quote from The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer


Interesting books

Horseradish
(5.5K)
Horseradish
by Lemony Snicket
Means of Ascent
(16.7K)
Means of Ascent
by Robert A. Caro
Enchanted Glass
(4.8K)
Enchanted Glass
by Diana Wynne Jones
First Things First
(29.7K)
First Things First
by Stephen R. Covey
Parable of the Talents
(14.3K)
Parable of the Talen...
by Octavia E. Butler
Heroes 'Til Curfew
(1.1K)
Heroes 'Til Curfew
by Susan Bischoff

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.