Mary Rich

“Though I remember, sharply, last things. The last book she read. The last play (and film, and concert, and opera, and art exhibition) that we went to together. The last wine she drank, the last clothes she bought. The last weekend away. The last bed we slept in that wasn't ours. The last this, the last that. The last piece of my writing that made her laugh. The last words she wrote herself; the last time she signed her name. The last piece of music I played her when she came home. Her last complete sentence. Her last spoken word.”
― Julian Barnes, Levels of Life

“No sé en qué momento la sed de justicia pasa esa frontera peligrosa en que se convierte también en una tentación de martirio. Un sentimiento moral muy elevado corre siempre el riesgo de desbordarse y caer en la exaltación del activismo frenético. Una confianza optimista muy marcada en la bondad de fondo de los seres humanos, si no está atemperada por el escepticismo de quien conoce más en profundidad las mezquindades ineludibles que se esconden en la naturaleza humana, lleva a pensar que es posible edificar el paraíso aquí en la tierra, con la "buena voluntad" de la inmensa mayoría. Y esos reformadores a ultranza, Savonarolas, Brunos, Robespierres, pueden llegar a ser personas que hacen, a su pesar, más mal que bien. Ya Marco Aurelio decía que los cristianos -los locos de la Cruz- obraban muy mal al llegar hasta el sacrificio por una simple idea de verdad y de justicia.”
― Héctor Abad Faciolince

“Art belongs to everybody and nobody. Art belongs to all time and no time. Art belongs to those who create it and those who savour it. Art no more belongs to the People and the Party than it once belonged to the aristocracy and the patron. Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time. Art does not exist for art’s sake: it exists for people’s sake.”
― Julian Barnes, The Noise of Time

“Three plagues, three contagions, threaten the world.
The first is the plague of nationalism.
The second is the plague of racism.
The third is the plague of religious fundamentalism.
All three share one trait, a common denominator--an aggressive, all-powerful, total irrationality. Anyone stricken with one of these plagues is beyond reason. In his head burns a sacred pyre that awaits its sacrificial victims.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium