Felipe Islas

“He wondered at times whether he didn’t belong to a class of people secretly convinced they had an arrangement with fate; in return for docility or ingenuous good will they were to be shielded from the worst brutalities in life.”
― Saul Bellow, Herzog

“El verbo leer, como el verbo amar y el verbo soñar, no soporta ‘el modo imperativo’. Yo siempre les aconsejé a mis estudiantes que si un libro los aburre lo dejen; que no lo lean porque es famoso, que no lean un libro porque es moderno, que no lean un libro porque es antiguo. La lectura debe ser una de las formas de la felicidad y no se puede obligar a nadie a ser feliz.


The verb reading, like the verb to love and the verb dreaming, doesn't bear the imperative mode. I always advised to my students that if a book bores them leave it; That they don't read it because it's famous, that they don't read a book because it's modern, that they don't read a book because it's antique. The reading should be one of the ways of happiness and nobody can be obliged to be happy.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“The enormous energy of the twentieth century, enough to drive the planet into a new orbit around a happier star, was being expended to maintain this immense motionless pause.”
― J.G. Ballard, Crash

“I accepted that a new kind of hate had emerged, silent and disciplined, a racism tempered by loyalty cards and PIN numbers. Shopping was now the model for all human behaviour, drained of emotion and anger.”
― J.G. Ballard, Kingdom Come