Pete Cachero > Pete's Quotes

“He laughed. “What’s to say? Great paintings—people flock to see them, they draw crowds, they’re reproduced endlessly on coffee mugs and mouse pads and anything-you-like. And, I count myself in the following, you can have a lifetime of perfectly sincere museum-going where you traipse around enjoying everything and then go out and have some lunch. But—” crossing back to the table to sit again “—if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don’t think, ‘oh, I love this picture because it’s universal.’ ‘I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.’ That’s not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you.” Fingertip gliding over the faded-out photo—the conservator’s touch, a touch-without-touching, a communion wafer’s space between the surface and his forefinger.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“I was worried that my exuberant drug use had damaged my brain and my nervous system and maybe even my soul in some irreparable and perhaps not readily apparent way.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“But Robin: their dear little Robs. More than ten years later, his death remained an agony; there was no glossing any detail; its horror was not subject to repair or permutation by any of the narrative devices that the Cleves knew. And—since this willful amnesia had kept Robin's death from being translated into that sweet old family vernacular which smoothed even the bitterest mysteries into comfortable, comprehensible form—the memory of that day's events had a chaotic, fragmented quality, bright mirrorshards of nightmare which flared at the smell of wisteria, the creaking of a clothes-line, a certain stormy cast of spring light.”
― Donna Tartt, The Little Friend

“Never do what you can’t undo.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Aristotle says in the Poetics,” said Henry, “that objects such as corpses, painful to view in themselves, can become delightful to contemplate in a work of art.” “And I believe Aristotle is correct. After all, what are the scenes in poetry graven on our memories, the ones that we love the most? Precisely these. The murder of Agamemnon and the wrath of Achilles. Dido on the funeral pyre. The daggers of the traitors and Caesar’s blood—remember how Suetonius describes his body being borne away on the litter, with one arm hanging down?” “Death is the mother of beauty,” said Henry. “And what is beauty?” “Terror.” “Well said,” said Julian. “Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.” I looked at Camilla, her face bright in the sun, and thought of that line from the Iliad I love so much, about Pallas Athene and the terrible eyes shining. “And if beauty is terror,” said Julian, “then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?” “To live,” said Camilla. “To live forever,” said Bunny, chin cupped in palm. The teakettle began to whistle.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“This,” I said pleasantly, “is known as getting it on.”
― Richard Bachman, Rage

“„Eindeutige Tatsachen sind, wie immer, Verhandlungssache – das lernte man schnell im Anwaltsberuf”
― Richard Bachmann

“Die Definition eines Arschlochs ist ein Mensch, der nicht glaubt, was er sieht.”
― Richard Bachmann

“You’re on, Ted,” I told him. “Your big chance, boy. Don’t blow it. Folks, this kid is going to dance his balls off before your very eyes.”
― Richard Bachman, Rage

“Mein Selbstwertgefühl hängt davon ab, wie viel von der Welt ich beim Herumlaufen verdränge? Himmel, was für ein erniedrigender Gedanke.”
― Richard Bachmann

“I still don't understand fashion. Why do people dress up in new styles in the first place if they're only going to act all embarrassed and ashamed about them later?”
― Iain Banks, Espedair Street

“Peddle one of the least harmful drugs humanity's ever discovered, and you get twenty years. Peddle something that kills a hundred thousand a year... and you get a knighthood.”
― Iain Banks, Espedair Street

“Thinking what had happened over in my mind, trying to figure out the whys and wherefores, see what lessons were to be learned, what signs to be read in it all.”
― Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory

“what I remember is the silence in spite of the noise. In my head it
might just as well have been a snowy day in the country.”
― Douglas Coupland

“I'd sooner have died than admit that the most valuable thing I owned was a fairly extensive collection of German industrial music dance mix EP records stored for even further embarrassment under a box of crumbling Christmas tree ornaments in a Portland, Oregon basement. So I told him I owned nothing of any value.”
― Douglas Coupland, Generatie X: vertellingen voor een versnelde cultuur

“I was sick of wanting money. I was sick of being without a goal.”
― Douglas Coupland, Hey Nostradamus!

“Truth be told, John said, the one thing in this world I want more than anything else is a great big crowbar, to jimmy myself open and take whatever creature that's sitting inside and shake it clean like a rug and then rinse it in a cold, clear lake like up in Oregon, and then I want to put it under the sun to let it heal and dry and grow and sit and come to consciousness again with a clear and quiet mind.”
― Douglas Coupland, Miss Wyoming

“Me contó un montón de cosas que yo no quería oír, cosas que mi madre y mi padre nunca supieron, y que odiarían saber. Lo cabrón que era Billy con ella. Cómo en ocasiones la golpeaba, la humillaba, y la trataba en general como un trozo de mierda excepcionalmente corrompida.

"¿Por qué te quedaste con él?"
"Era mi chico. Siempre piensas que será diferente, que puedes hacerle cambiar, que tú puedes suponer la diferencia."

Eso lo entendía, Pero es un error. Los únicos hijoputas que supusieron alguna vez una diferencia para Billy fueron los Provisionales, y ellos también eran unos cabrones. No tengo ninguna ilusión sobre ellos como luchadores de la libertad. Los muy hijoputas convirtieron a mi hermano en un montón de comida para gatos. Pero ellos sólo tiraron de la palanca. Su muerte fue concebida por esos cabrones anaranjaos que venían por aquí todos los meses de julio con sus fajines y sus flautas, llenando la estúpida cabeza de Billy con insensateces acerca de la corona y la nación y toda esa mierda. Ellos irán a casa felices por el día de hoy. Pueden contarles a todos sus colegas cómo murió asesinado por el IRA uno de la familia mientras defendía el Ulster. Eso alimentará su ira sin objeto, hará que les inviten a copas en los pubs, y consolidará su credibilidad memo-bastarda entre otros tontolabas sectarios.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Still, failure, success, what is it? Whae gies a fuck. We aw live, then we die, in quite a short space ay time n аw. That's it; end ay fuckin story.”
― Irvine Welsh

“Si por mi fuera, pillaría todos los libros que hay, haría una pila enorme con ellos y los quemaría todos. Los libros sólo sirven para que los listos farden acerca de toda la mierda que han leído. Todo lo que necesitas saber lo puedes sacar de la prensa y de la tele. Capullos pretenciosos. Ya les daré yo jodidos libros.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“When the Pentagon feels free and even gleeful about killing anybody and Everybody who gets in the way of their vicious crusade for oil, the public soul of this country has changed forever, and professional sports is only a serenade for the death of the American dream. Mahalo.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness: Modern History from the ESPN.com Sports Desk

“We'd be fools not to ride this strange torpedo all the way out to the end.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

“Paranoia is just another mask for ignorance. The truth, when you finally chase it down is almost always far worse than your darkest visions and fears”
― Hunter S. Thompson

“If I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, 'Kurt is up in heaven now.' That's my favorite joke.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Do you realize that all great literature — "Moby Dick," "Huckleberry Finn," "A Farewell to Arms," "The Scarlet Letter," "The Red Badge of Courage," "The Iliad and The Odyssey," "Crime and Punishment," the Bible, and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" — are all about what a bummer it is to be a ...human being?”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“You hate America, don't you?'

That would be as silly as loving it,' I said. 'It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to a human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“No art is possible without a dance with death, he wrote.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“In general, writers never find out how strong their talent is: that investigation begins with their obituaries. In the USSR, writers found out how good they were when they were still alive. If the talent was strong, only luck or silence could save them.”
― Martin Amis, Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million

“there in the night their bed had the towelly smell of marriage.”
― Martin Amis, The Information