Claudia (Encruzilhada dos Livros) > Claudia's Quotes

“Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“I am alone again and I want to be so; alone with the pure sky and open sea.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“That's what literature is. It's the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them!”
― Connie Willis, Passage

“Books are a narcotic.”
― Franz Kafka

“Stories make sense when so much around us is senseless, and perhaps what makes them most comforting is that while life goes on and pain goes on, stories do us the favor of ending.”
― John Hodgman

“What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“did anybody ever come back from the dead any single one of the millions who got killed did any one of them ever come back and say by god i'm glad i'm dead because death is always better than dishonor? did they say i'm glad i died to make the world safe for democracy? did they say i like death better than losing liberty? did any of them ever say it's good to think i got my guts blown out for the honor of my country? did any of them ever say look at me i'm dead but i died for decency and that's better than being alive? did any of them ever say here i am i've been rotting for two years in a foreign grave but it's wonderful to die for your native land? did any of them say hurray i died for womanhood and i'm happy see how i sing even though my mouth is choked with worms?”
― Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun

“War is what happens when language fails.”
― Margaret Atwood

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
― Charles Bukowski

“You know, one of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music.”
― Annie Proulx

“To live in a culture in which women are routinely naked where men aren't is to learn inequality in little ways all day long. So even if we agree that sexual imagery is in fact a language, it is clearly one that is already heavily edited to protect men's sexual--and hence social--confidence while undermining that of women.”
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women

“The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behaviour and not appearance.”
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women

“A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.”
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women

“Men are visually aroused by women's bodies and less sensitive to their arousal by women's personalities because they are trained early into that response, while women are less visually aroused and more emotionally aroused because that is their training. This asymmetry in sexual education maintains men's power in the myth: They look at women's bodies, evaluate, move on; their own bodies are not looked at, evaluated, and taken or passed over. But there is no "rock called gender" responsible for that; it can change so that real mutuality--an equal gaze, equal vulnerability, equal desire--brings heterosexual men and women together.”
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women

“May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“The Witch, however, is a woman who stands entirely on her own. She is more often than not an outsider, and her gift is transformation. She is a change agent, and her work is sparked by speech: an incantation, a naming, a blessing, a curse.”
― Taisia Kitaiskaia, Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers

“I know I'll die someday, but I buy books like an immortal.”
― Jeff Strand

“[Man] literally drives himself into a blind obliviousness with social games, psychological tricks, personal preoccupations so far removed from the reality of his situation that they are forms of madness, but madness all the same.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

“doesn’t matter whether the cultural hero-system is frankly magical, religious, and primitive or secular, scientific, and civilized. It is still a mythical hero-system in which people serve in order to earn a feeling of primary value, of cosmic specialness, of ultimate usefulness to creation, of unshakable meaning. They earn this feeling by carving out a place in nature, by building an edifice that reflects human value: a temple, a cathedral, a totem pole, a skyscraper, a family that spans three generations. The hope and belief is that the things that man creates in society are of lasting worth and meaning, that they outlive or outshine death and decay, that man and his products count.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

“Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

“Relationship is thus always slavery of a kind, which leaves a residue of guilt.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

“To grow up at all is to conceal the mass of internal scar tissue that throbs in our dreams.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

“My solitude doesn’t depend on the presence or absence of people; on the contrary, I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The label of "marathoner" has, from the beginning, been awarded to those who went the distance under their own power, whether they ran, walked, crawled or tiptoed. When you cross that finish line, you've entered an elite group. About one-tenth of one percent of the population has done it. Don't let anyone take that great achievement away from you.”
― Jeff Galloway, Marathon!

“The result of this deeply male-dominated culture is that the male experience, the male perspective, has come to be seen as universal, while the female experience--that of half the global population, after all--is seen as, well, niche.”
― Caroline Criado-Pérez, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

“So a group of one hundred female teachers in Spanish would be referred to as ‘las profesoras’ – but as soon as you add a single male teacher, the group suddenly becomes ‘los profesores’. Such is the power of the default male.”
― Caroline Criado Pérez, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

“In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn’t merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to becoming partly a dog.”
― James Jacobson, How to Meditate with Your Dog: An Introduction to Meditation for Dog Lovers

“We are so busy teaching girls to be likeable that we often forget to teach them, as we do boys, that they should be respected.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“A society that does not respect women's anger is one that does not respect women; not as human beings, thinkers, knowers, active participants, or citizens.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“One of the most powerful effects of learning to prioritize other people's perspectives above your own is that you lose the ability to see others as blameworthy, even when they are openly acting as aggressors.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger