Frederico

“While on the one hand," he said, "our most prominent scientists, the inexhaustible heroes of this perennial confusion, have finally and somewhat unfortunately extricated themselves from the metaphor of godhead, they have immediately fallen into the trap of regarding this oppressive history as some kind of triumphant march, a supernatural progress following, what they call, the victory of 'will and intellect', and though, as you know, I am no longer capable of being the least surprised by this, I must confess to you I still cannot understand why it should be the cause of such universal celebration for them that we have climbed out of the trees. Do they think it's good like this? I find nothing amusing in it. Furthermore it doesn't fit us properly: you only have to consider how long, even after thousands of years of practice, we can keep going on two legs. Half a day, my dear friend, and we shouldn't forget it.”
― László Krasznahorkai, The Melancholy of Resistance

“as he noticed the feeble ticking of his watch, he suddenly realized that he had been escaping all his life, that life had been a constant escape, escape from meaninglessness into music, from music to guilt, from guilt and self-punishment into pure ratiocination, and finally escape from that too, that it was retreat after retreat, as if his guardian angel had, in his own peculiar fashion, been steering him to the antithesis of retreat, to an almost simple-minded acceptance of things as they were, at which point he understood that there was nothing to be understood, that if there was reason in the world it far transcended his own, and that therefore it was enough to notice and observe that which he actually possessed.”
― László Krasznahorkai, The Melancholy of Resistance

“He gazed sadly at the threatening sky, at the burned-out remnants of a locust-plagued summer, and suddenly saw on the twig of an acacia, as in a vision, the progress of spring, summer, fall and winter, as if the whole of time were a frivolous interlude in the much greater spaces of eternity, a brilliant conjuring trick to produce something apparently orderly out of chaos, to establish a vantage point from which chance might begin to look like necessity . . . and he saw himself nailed to the cross of his own cradle and coffin, painfully trying to tear his body away, only, eventually, to deliver himself — utterly naked, without identifying mark, stripped down to essentials — into the care of the people whose duty it was to wash the corpses, people obeying an order snapped out in the dry air against a background loud with torturers and flayers of skin, where he was obliged to regard the human condition without a trace of pity, without a single possibility of any way back to life, because by then he would know for certain that all his life he had been playing with cheaters who had marked the cards and who would, in the end, strip him even of his last means of defense, of that hope of someday finding his way back home.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“Eu conheci esse pedaço do belo Belorizonte, nele padeci, esperei, amei, tive dores-de-corno augustas, discuti e neguei. Conhecia todo mundo. Cada pedra nas calçadas, cada tijolo nas sargetas, seus bueiros, os postes, as ávores. Distinguia seus odores e suas cores de todas as horas. Seu sol, sua chuva, seus calores e seu frio. Ali vivi dos meus dezessete aos meus vinte e quatro anos. Vinte anos nos anos Vinte. Sete anos que valeram pelos que tinha vivido antes e que viveria depois. Hoje, aqueles sete anos, eles só, existem na minha memória.”
― Pedro Nava, Beira-mar