Quotes from The Feast of the Goat

“In this country, in one way or another, everyone had bean, was, or would be part of the regime. "The worst thing that can happen to a Dominican is to be intelligent or competent," he had once heard Agustín Cabral say ...and the words had been etched in his mind: "Because sooner or later Trujillo will call upon him to serve the regime, or his person, and when he calls, one is not permitted to say no." [Agustín Cabral] was proof of this truth....As Estrella Sadhalá always said, the Goat had taken from people the sacred attribute given to them by God: their free will.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Feast of the Goat

“«Un libro abierto es un cerebro que habla; cerrado, un amigo que espera; olvidado, un alma que perdona; destruido, un corazón que llora».”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Feast of the Goat

“They had forgotten the abuses, the murders, the corruption, the spying, the isolation, the fear: horror had become myth. Everybody had jobs and there wasn't so much crime.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Feast of the Goat

“He undressed and, wearing slippers and a robe, went to the bathroom to shave. He turned on the radio. They read the newspapers on the Dominican Voice and Caribbean Radio. Until a few years ago the news bulletins had begun at five. But when his brother Petan, the owner of the Dominican Voice, found out that he woke at four, he moved the newscasts up an hour. The other stations followed suit. They knew he listened to the radio while he shaved, bathed, and dressed, and they were painstakingly careful.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Feast of the Goat

“No lo entiendes, Urania. Hay muchas cosas de la Era que has llegado a entender; algunas, al principio, te parecían inextricables, pero, a fuerza de leer, escuchar, cotejar y pensar, has llegado a comprender que tantos millones de personas, machacadas por la propaganda, por la falta de información, embrutecidas por el adoctrinamiento, el aislamiento, despojadas de libre albedrío, de voluntad y hasta de curiosidad por el miedo y la práctica del servilismo y la obsecuencia, llegaran a divinizar a Trujillo. No solo a temerlo, sino a quererlo, como llegan a querer los hijos a los padres autoritarios, a convencerse de que azotes y castigos son por su bien.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Feast of the Goat

“Trujillo podía hacer que el agua se volviera vino y los panes se multiplicaran, si le daba en los cojones”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Feast of the Goat

“هكذا هي السياسة ،إنها شق الطريق بين الجثث”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Feast of the Goat

“Trujillo lo premió con una sonrisa. Siempre sintió simpatía por Modesto, que, además de inteligente, era ponderado, justo, afable, sin dobleces. Sin embargo, su inteligencia no era controlable y aprovechable, como la de Cerebrito, el Constitucionalista Beodo o Balaguer.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Feast of the Goat

“Hay muchas cosas de la Era que has llegado a entender; algunas, al principio, te parecían inextricables, pero, a fuerza de leer, escuchar, cotejar y pensar, has llegado a comprender que tantos millones de personas, machacadas por la propaganda, por la falta de información, embrutecidas por el adoctrinamiento, el aislamiento, despojadas de libre albedrío, de voluntad y hasta de curiosidad por el miedo y la práctica del servilismo y la obsecuencia, llegaran a divinizar a Trujillo. No sólo a temerlo, sino a quererlo, como llegan a querer los hijos a los padres autoritarios, a convencerse de que azotes y castigos son por su bien. Lo”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Feast of the Goat

“No era el deseo de aprender, de triunfar, lo que te confinaba en la biblioteca, sino de marearte, intoxicarte, perderte en esas materias —ciencias o letras, daba igual— para no pensar, para ahuyentar los recuerdos dominicanos. —Pero,”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Feast of the Goat

“Într-o clasificare după merite, pe primul loc se află militarii. Îşi fac datoria, se ţin foarte puţin de intrigi, nu pierd timpul. Apoi, tăranii. (…) Urmează funcţionarii, întreprinzătorii, comercianţii. Literaţii şi intelectualii – ultimii. Chiar şi după preoţi… O adunătură de canalii.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Feast of the Goat

“مؤسف أنك غير قادر على الكلام. كنا سنحاول فهم ذلك معا. ما الذي جعل دون فرويلان يحتفظ بولاء كلبي لتروخييو؟ لقد بقى مخلصا حتى النهاية، مثلك. فهو لم يشارك في المؤامرة، ولم تفعل ذلك أنت أيضا. واصل لحس يد الزعيم بعد تبجحه في باراهونا بأنه ضاجع زوجته. الزعيم الذي جعله يلف ويدور في أميركا الجنوبية، ليزور بلدانا كوزير خارجية للجمهورية. وينتقل من بوينس آيرس إلى كاراكاس، ومن كاراكاس إلى ريو أو برازيليا، ومن برازيلبا إلى مونتيفيديو، ومن مونتيفيديو إلى كاراكاس، لمجرد أن يواصل الزعيم مضاجعة جارتنا الجميلة باطمئان.


انها صورة تحاصر اورانيا منذ زمن طويل، تسبب لها الضحك والسخط. صورة وزير الدولة للعلاقات الخارجية في العهد وهو يصعد ويهبط من طائرات. ليجوب العواصم الأمريكية الجنوبية. منصاعا لأوامر مستعجلة تنتظره في كل مطار، لكي يواصل ذلك الطريق الهستيري. مزعجا الحكومات بذرائع فارغة. وكل ذلك من أجل ألا يعود إلى مدينة تروخييو بينما الزعيم يضاجع زوجته. وهذا ما يرويه كراسويلر نفسه. أبرزكتاب سيرة حياة تروخييو. أي أن الجميع كانوا يعرفون ذلك. ودون فرويلان نفسه أيضا.


أهناك ما يستحق كل ذلك يا أبي؟ أكان الوهم بالتمتع بالسلطة؟ أحيانا أفكر أن لا. وأن الازدهار كان أمرا ثانويا. وأنكم في الحقيقة. أنت، وأرالا، وبيتشاردو، وتشيرينوس، وألفاريث بينا، ومانويل ألفونسو، كنتم تستلذون التلوث بالقذارة. وأن تروخييو قد أخرج من أعماق أرواحكم ميلا مازوشيا، ككائنات تحتاج إلى من يبصق عليها، يهينها، لأنها بالتحقير تجد ذواتها.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Feast of the Goat

“Luego de tantos años de servir al Jefe, habías perdido los escrúpulos, la sensibilidad, el menor asomo de rectitud. Igual que tus colegas. Igual que el país entero, tal vez. ¿Era ése el requisito para mantenerse en el poder sin morirse de asco? Volverse un desalmado, un monstruo como tu Jefe. Quedarse frescos y contentos como el bello Ramfis después de violar y dejar desangrándose en el Hospital Marión a Rosalía. La”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Feast of the Goat

“يمكن للكولونيل أن يكون شيطانا؛ ولكنه مفيد للزعيم: فكل ما هو سيئ ينسب إليه، بينما ينسب الجيد إلى تروخييو .
هل هناك خدمة وفائدة أكبرمن هده؟ فلكي تستمر حكومة مدة ثلاثين سنة. لا بد من وجود جوني اأبيس يدس يده في البراز. بل ويدس جسمه ورأسه اذا اقتضى الأمر. إنه يحرق نفسه. إنه يستقطب كراهية الأعداء. وأحيانا الأصدقاء. الزعيم يعرف ذلك. ولهذا يستبقيه إلى جانبه ٠ ولولا أن الكولونيل يحمي ظهر الزعيم. لما كان بالإمكان ضمان ألا يحدث له ما جرى لبيريث خيمينث في فنزويلا. وباتيستا في كوبا. وبيرون في الأرجنتين”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Feast of the Goat

“Detrás de sus pestañas, el Generalísimo observó cómo se descomponían de envidia las caras de Virgilio Álvarez Pina, de la Inmundicia Viviente, de Paíno Pichardo y de los generales. Sufrían. Pensaban que el nimio, el discreto poeta, el delicuescente profesor y jurista acababa de ganarles unos puntos en la eterna competencia en que vivían por los favores del Jefe, por ser reconocidos, mencionados, elegidos, distinguidos sobre los demás. Sintió ternura por estos diligentes vástagos, a los que tenía viviendo treinta años en perpetua inseguridad. —No”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Feast of the Goat

“Yo no quería creer que hubiera traicionado a su compañero de toda la vida. Bueno, la política es eso, abrirse camino entre cadáveres. —El”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Feast of the Goat

“—¿Valía la pena, papá? ¿Era por la ilusión de estar disfrutando del poder? A veces pienso que no, que medrar era lo secundario. Que, en verdad, a ti, a Arala, a Pichardo, a Chirinos, a Álvarez Pina, a Manuel Alfonso, les gustaba ensuciarse. Que Trujillo les sacó del fondo del alma una vocación masoquista, de seres que necesitaban ser escupidos, maltratados, que sintiéndose abyectos se realizaban. El”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Feast of the Goat

“Mis infortunios sentimentales se debían más a mí que a ella, por haberla querido de una manera que ella nunca hubiera podido quererme a mí, aunque, en algunas contadas ocasiones, lo intentara.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Feast of the Goat

“rosado, azul y blanco, y llevan medias gordas”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Feast of the Goat

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Popular quotes

“I definitely wasn’t cold. I was liquid heat. I was terror and curiosity and denial disguised as indifference.”
― Amy Harmon, quote from The Bird and the Sword

“Yatima found verself gazing at a red-tinged cluster of pulsing organic parts, a translucent confusion of fluids and tissue. Sections divided, dissolved, reorganised. It looked like a flesher embryo – though not quite a realist portrait. The imaging technique kept changing, revealing different structures: Yatima saw hints of delicate limbs and organs caught in slices of transmitted dark; a stark silhouette of bones in an X-ray flash; the finely branched network of the nervous system bursting into view as a filigreed shadow, shrinking from myelin to lipids to a scatter of vesicled neurotransmitters against a radio-frequency MRI chirp.

There were two bodies now. Twins? One was larger, though – sometimes much larger. The two kept changing places, twisting around each other, shrinking or growing in stroboscopic leaps while the wavelengths of the image stuttered across the spectrum.

One flesher child was turning into a creature of glass, nerves and blood vessels vitrifying into optical fibres. A sudden, startling white-light image showed living, breathing Siamese twins, impossibly transected to expose raw pink and grey muscles working side by side with shape-memory alloys and piezoelectric actuators, flesher and gleisner anatomies interpenetrating. The scene spun and morphed into a lone robot child in a flesher's womb; spun again to show a luminous map of a citizen's mind embedded in the same woman's brain; zoomed out to place her, curled, in a cocoon of optical and electronic cables. Then a swarm of nanomachines burst through her skin, and everything scattered into a cloud of grey dust.

Two flesher children walked side by side, hand in hand. Or father and son, gleisner and flesher, citizen and gleisner... Yatima gave up trying to pin them down, and let the impressions flow through ver. The figures strode calmly along a city's main street, while towers rose and crumbled around them, jungle and desert advanced and retreated.

The artwork, unbidden, sent Yatima's viewpoint wheeling around the figures. Ve saw them exchanging glances, touches, kisses – and blows, awkwardly, their right arms fused at the wrists. Making peace and melting together. The smaller lifting the larger on to vis shoulders – then the passenger's height flowing down to the bearer like an hourglass's sand.”
― Greg Egan, quote from Diaspora

“I picked up my mocha and stood. The cup was still almost half-full, but I didn't want it anymore. Besides, it was now luke-warm. Which meant I didn't have to worry if it was scalding him when I tossed the remains in Ethan's face.I think Finn might have craked a smileas he held the door open for me, but I wasn't sure.”
― Jenna Black, quote from Glimmerglass

“She'd been told time and again that it was rude stare, but she didn't obey her mother's rule now. The giant mesmerized her and she wanted to remember everything she could about him.

He must have felt her staring at him, though because he suddenly turned and looked directly her.

Brenna decided to make her papa proud of her and behave like a proper young lady. She grabbed a fistful of her skirt, hiked it up to her knees, and bent down to curtsy. She promptly lost her balance and almost hit her head against the floor, but she was quick enough to lean back so she could land on her
bottom.

She stood back up, remembered to let go of her skirts, and peeked up at the stranger to see what he thought about her newly acquired skill.

The giant smiled at her.

As soon as he looked away, she squeezed herself up against Rachel's backside again.

"I'm going to marry him," she whispered.”
― Julie Garwood, quote from The Wedding

“To say that there is still a chasm between our current scientific understanding of the universe and the truth as I saw it is a considerable understatement. I still love physics and cosmology, still love studying our vast and wonderful universe. Only I now have a greatly enlarged conception of what “vast” and “wonderful” really mean. The physical side of the universe is as a speck of dust compared to the invisible and spiritual part. In my past view, spiritual wasn’t a word that I would have employed during a scientific conversation. Now I believe it is a word that we cannot afford to leave out.”
― Eben Alexander, quote from Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife

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