André Nóbrega's Blog, page 18

Quote / Citação (12)

"His intent toward the child, he would protest, had never been to dishonor but to rescue. Rescue, however, had many names, and the rope up which a maiden climbed to safety might then be used to bind her most cruelly. In that instant he had become, awkwardly, two creatures resident within the same life - one conveyed without qualification into the haunted spaces of desire, the other walled in by work-demands in which desire was never better than annoying and too often debilitating - the two se...

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

No dia em que este livro chegou às minhas mãos, o céu estava cinzento e chorava desesperadamente. A dona do livro trouxe-o junto com outro que tinha prometido emprestar-me, porque achou que eu devia ler. Ficámos os dois completamente encharcados. Ela estava mais certa do que alguma vez poderia imaginar.

Este livro conta a história de Liesel - A Rapariga que Roubava Livros (título da tradução para português) - uma criança alemã que vive perto de Munique na altura da Segunda Guerra Mundial, da A...

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"I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretence, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplac...

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"Droll thing life is - that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself - that comes too late - a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defe...

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"The entire modern deification of survival per se, survival returning to itself, survival naked and abstract, with the denial of any substantive excellence in what survives, except the capacity for more survival still, is surely the strangest intellectual stopping-place ever proposed by one man to another."

William James

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"Trying to kill somebody like Vibe," it seemed to Dally, "best take your lesson from the famous attempt fifteen years ago on Henry Clay Frick, the Butcher of Homestead, which is never go for a head shot. Aiming for Frick's head was Brother Berkmann's big mistake, classic Anarchist mistake of assumin that all heads contain brains you see, when in fact there wa'n't nothin inside damned Frick's bean worth wastin a bullet on. People like 'at, you always want to go for the gut. Because of all the...

Cenas (5)

Um comentário do Brad Pitt no The Guardian que demonstra uma maior compreensão do problema da toxicodependência e da guerra às drogas dos EUA do que é habitual ler-se ou ouvir-se. Convido-vos a ler e pensar sobre isto, ainda que isto seja tão somente uma introdução à enorme estupidez que são os pensamentos e atitudes actuais perante este problema.
The Guardian published a comment on the "War on Drugs" by Brad Pitt that shows a really good understanding of this problem. I invite you to read and...

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Whoa there now, Detective Basnight. It was routine to have these, what were known in the business as Grumpy Thoughts now and then, and he guessed he'd known socially or worked alongside of more than enough Pinks and finks who'd ended up clocking out before shift's end, and who's to say how far Lew might have taken his own contrition at working as long as he had on the wrong side, for the wrong people - though at least he had tumbled early, almost from the start, to how little he really wanted...

La Cage Dorée by Ruben Alves

A Gaiola Dourada foi uma óptima surpresa. O filme é um retrato do que tem sido a vida dos emigrantes portugueses daquela geração, trazido por um realizador que notoriamente conhece esta realidade de perto. O que resulta disto é uma visão inteligente dos costumes e dos problemas comuns a muitas das pessoas naquela situação disfarçada de filme cómico que leva a audiência à gargalhada vezes sem conta.
A nível de temática, quero destacar a referência ao preconceito xenófobo para com os imigrantes,...

Quote / Citação (7)

"There's a new Puccini opera," she said. "An American betrays a Japanese woman. Butterfly. He ought to die of shame, but does not - Butterfly does. What are we to make of this? Is it that Japanese do die of shame and dishonour but American don't? Maybe can't ever die of shame because they lack the cultural equipment? As if, somehow, your country is just mechanically destined to move forward regardless of who is in the way or underfoot?

Thomas Pynchon, Against The Day (2006)