Penguin Gunter

“If your brains were dynamite there wouldn't be enough to blow your hat off.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

“Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like, guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting "Gotcha". It wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't eaten it.'
'Why not?'
'Because if you're dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won't give up. They'll get you in the end.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“And he closed the case. I found it very unfriendly. So young and already mystery made him uncomfortable. There was no way he could be my friend. Ruled out. Kaputt. Then it turned out he also went to Casp, a year ahead of me. And his name was Bernat Plensa i Punsoda. I may have said that already. And he was so uptight, as if they’d bathed him in a vat of hair spray and forgot to rinse him off. And I had to admit, after sixteen minutes, that that unfriendly boy who refused to accept mystery, who would never be my friend, and who was named Bernat Plensa i Punsoda, had something about him that made a violin bought for one hundred and seventy-five pesetas at Casa Parramon sound with a delicacy I had never been able to achieve. And Trullols looked at him with satisfaction and I thought what a piece of shit my violin was. That was when I swore that I would make him shut up forever, him, the violin dedicated to Madame d’Angoulême and the hair spray he’d bathed in; and I think that it would have been much better for everyone if I’d never had that thought. For the moment, all I did was let it gradually ripen. It’s hard to believe that the most unthinkable tragedies can be born of the most innocent things.”
― Jaume Cabré, Confessions