Marco Díaz

“What a scholar one might be if one knew well only some half a dozen books.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“Therefore, foolish is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will cause pain when it arrives but because anticipation of it is painful.”
― Epicurus

“Incidentally, I use the word reader very loosely. Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the very first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do not have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and then can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. However, let us not confuse the physical eye, that monstrous masterpiece of evolution, with the mind, an even more monstrous achievement. A book, no matter what it is-a work of fiction or a work of science (the boundary between the two is not as clear as is generally believed)-a book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only instrument used upon a book.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“¡Admirable parentesco matemático entre los hombres! ―Qué decir de esta selva de relaciones y correspondencias―. (No tenemos ni siquiera la mitad de las palabras que tenían los romanos para hablar de ello.) ¡Qué mezclas y qué difusiones!
Siento infinitamente el poder, el querer porque siento infinitamente lo informe y el azar que los recubre, los tolera y tiende a volver a comenzar su libertad fatal, su figura indiferente, su nivel de igual riesgo.”
― Paul Valéry