“I have known people like you before, Mr. Penumbra. People with your gift.” “Oh, if I have any skill at research, it is only—” “No, no. Anyone can fuss in the archives. I am speaking of the willingness to entertain absurd ideas. It is a
...more
“By blood and by choice, we make our ghosts; we haunt ourselves.”
― Drums of Autumn
― Drums of Autumn
“The idea of an earthly paradise in which men should live together in a state of brotherhood, without laws and without brute labor, had haunted the human imagination for thousands of years. And this vision had had a certain hold even on the groups who actually profited by each historic change. The heirs of the French, English, and American revolutions had partly believed in their own phrases about the rights of man, freedom of speech, equality before the law, and the like, and had even allowed their conduct to be influenced by them to some extent. But by the fourth decade of the twentieth century all the main currents of political thought were authoritarian. The earthly paradise had been discredited at exactly the moment when it became realizable. Every new political theory, by whatever name it called itself, led back to hierarchy and regimentation. And in the general hardening of outlook that set in round about 1930, practices which had been long abandoned, in some cases for hundreds of years—imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages and the deportation of whole populations—not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.”
― 1984
― 1984
“The only thing more painful than being an active forgetter is to be an inert rememberer.”
― Everything Is Illuminated
― Everything Is Illuminated
“Don Basilio era un hombre de aspecto feroz y bigotes frondosos que no se andaba con ñoñerías y suscribía la teoría de que un uso liberal de adverbios y la adjetivación excesiva eran cosa de pervertidos y gentes con deficiencias vitamínicas.”
― El juego del ángel
― El juego del ángel
“Is that how we lived, then? But we lived as usual. Everyone does, most of the time. Whatever is going on is as usual. Even this is as usual, now.
We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”
― The Handmaid’s Tale
We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”
― The Handmaid’s Tale
Lorena’s 2025 Year in Books
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