Waterworks Quotes

“As a people we practiced excess. Excess in everything - pleasure, gaudy display, endless toil, and death. Vagrant children slept in the alleys. Ragpicking was a profession. A conspicuously self-satisfied class of new wealth and weak intellect was all aglitter in a setting of mass misery.”
― E.L. Doctrow

“…and his religion no longer had any authority … other than as an organizer of his daily life and conduct as a filing system for his perceptions. From The Waterworks.”
― E.L. Doctorow

“The artificial hills and plazas of even small centers were symbolic depictions of the sacred landscape of mountains, hills, trees, and lakes, material replicas of the Maya cosmos designed as the settings for elaborate public rituals that sanctified Maya life—and water management. Tikal, Belize's Caracol, and other centers were giant water catchments, their pyramids "water mountains.”
― Brian Murray Fagan