“Like any collection of family photographs, it was a random selection that told only fragments of a story. The real tale would be revealed by the pictures that were missing or never even taken at all, not the ones that had been so carefully framed or packed away neatly in an envelope.”
― Victoria Hislop, quote from The Island
“After the endless disappointing cups of Nescafé, served as though the tasteless dissolving granules of instant coffee were a delicacy, Alexis felt no cup of coffee had ever tasted as powerful and delicious as this.
It seemed that nobody had the heart to tell the Greeks that Nescafé was no longer a novelty – it was this old-fashioned thick and treacly fluid that everyone, including her, craved.”
― Victoria Hislop, quote from The Island
“spilled out like a volcanic eruption. Wardrobe”
― Victoria Hislop, quote from The Island
Victoria Hislop
Born place: The United Kingdom
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“Mas don Rigoberto sabia que não havia outro remédio, tinha que se resignar e esperar. Provavelmente as únicas brigas do casal ao longo de todos os anos que estavam juntos foram causadas pelos atrasos de Lucrecia sempre que iam sair, para onde fosse, um cinema, um jantar, uma exposição, fazer compras, uma operação bancária, uma viagem. No começo, quando começaram a morar juntos, recém-casados, ele pensava que sua mulher demorava por mera inapetência e desprezo pela pontualidade. Tiveram discussões, desavenças, brigas por causa disso. Pouco a pouco, do Rigoberto, observando-a, refletindo, entendeu que esses atrasos da esposa na hora de sair para qualquer compromisso não eram uma coisa superficial, um desleixo de mulher orgulhosa. Obedeciam a algo mais profundo, um estado ontológico da alma, porque, sem que ela tivesse consciência do que lhe ocorria, toda vez que precisava sair de algum lugar, da sua própria casa, a de uma amiga que estava visitando, o restaurante onde acabara de jantar, era dominada por uma inquietação recôndita, uma insegurança, um medo obscuro, primitivo, de ter que ir embora, sair dali, mudar de lugar, e então inventava todo tipo de pretextos - pegar um lenço, trocar a bolsa, procurar as chaves, verificar se as janelas estavam bem fechadas, a televisão desligada, se o fogão não estava acesso ou o telefone fora do gancho -, qualquer coisa que atrasasse por alguns minutos ou segundos a pavorosa ação de partir.
Ela sempre foi assim? Quando era pequena também? Não se atreveu a perguntar. Mas já havia constatado que, com o passar dos anos, esse prurido, mania ou fatalidade se acentuava, a tal ponto que Rigoberto às vezes pensava, com um calafrio, que talvez chegasse o dia que Lucrecia, com a mesma benignidade do personagem de Melville, ia contrair a letargia ou indolência metafísica de Bartleby e decidir não mais sair da sua casa, quem sabe do seu quarto e até da sua cama. "Medo de abandonar o ser, de perder o ser, de ficar sem seu ser", pensou mais uma vez. Era o diagnóstico que havia chegado em relação aos atrasos da esposa.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Time of the Hero
“It was only natural that the intellectuals who questioned the necessity of American purpose did not rush from Cambridge and New Haven to inflict their doubts about American power and goals upon the nation’s policies. So people like Riesman, classic intellectuals, stayed where they were while the new breed of thinkers-doers, half of academe, half of the nation’s think tanks and of policy planning, would make the trip, not doubting for a moment the validity of their right to serve, the quality of their experience. They were men who reflected the post-Munich, post-McCarthy pragmatism of the age. One had to stop totalitarianism, and since the only thing the totalitarians understood was force, one had to be willing to use force. They justified each decision to use power by their own conviction that the Communists were worse, which justified our dirty tricks, our toughness.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Best and the Brightest
“It was sort of my own personal apocalypse.”
― Nick Cole, quote from The Old Man and the Wasteland
“We are all a little wiser towards the end of our lives and the wisdom often comes from the pain suffered by oneself.”
― Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, quote from Yayati: A Classic Tale of Lust
“Good," said Jack, "because if you get any closer to that car in front, the driver'll be sticking up a sign asking you to climb up through the back window and give him head before you fuck him up the ass, is all.”
― Jack L. Pyke, quote from Backlash
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