Raindancer

“За три години при нас, в рилските усои, останаха трайно седмина послушници от мъжки пол. А имаше и девици, които искаха да се посветят на Христа, но аз ги отпращах към известните ми женски обители. Защото едно е да искаш, друго е да устоиш, а съвсем трето е да събереш огън и сено на едно място.”
― Николай Светлев, Аз, грешният Иван

“¿Cómo habian podido? Aquel era el universo que creara su padre. Allí estaban los pasos del Benny, la sonrisa de La Única, las danzas del maestro Lecuona, las guitarras de los Matamoros, las zarzuelas de Roig… Cuarenta años de la mejor musica de su isla se desvanecían frente a una violencia incomprensible. Rozó con sus dedos las tablas claveteadas y sospechó que jamás podría recuperar los tesoros de aquel local que su hijita y su nieta llenaran de gorjeos. Le habian robado su vida.
Amalia miró a su padre, que tenía una palidez nueva en el rostro.
- Papá.
Pero él no la oyó; su corazón le dolía como si un puño se lo apretara.
Cerró los ojos para no ver más aquel destrozo.
Cerró los ojos para no ver más aquel país.
Cerró los ojos para no ver más.
Cerró los ojos.”
― Daina Chaviano, The Island of Eternal Love

“Excerpt from Ursula K Le Guin's speech at National Book Awards

Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom – poets, visionaries – realists of a larger reality.
Right now, we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.
Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial. I see my own publishers, in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an e-book six or seven times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience, and writers threatened by corporate fatwa. And I see a lot of us, the producers, who write the books and make the books, accepting this – letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish, what to write.
Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.
I’ve had a long career as a writer, and a good one, in good company. Here at the end of it, I don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds; but the name of our beautiful reward isn’t profit. Its name is freedom.”
― Ursula K Le Guin

“Such
times are rare, such times are fleeting, but always bright when caught, measured, hung, and later regarded
in times of adversity, there in the kinder halls of memory, against the flapping of the flames.”
― Roger Zelazny, A Night in the Lonesome October