Gigio

“The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it, would save him.”
― Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men

“If you steal from one book you are condemned as a plagiarist, but if you steal from ten books you are considered a scholar, and if you steal from thirty or forty books, a distinguished scholar.”
― Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness

“Most people, the minute they meet you, were sizing you up for some competition for resources. It was as if everyone lived in fear of a shipwreck, where only so many people would fit on the lifeboat, and they were constantly trying to stake out their property and identify dispensable people – people they could get rid of.... Everyone is trying to reassure themselves: I'm not going to get kicked off the boat, they are. They're always separating people into two groups, allies and dispensable people... The number of people who want to understand what you're like instead of trying to figure out whether you get to stay on the boat - it's really limited.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot

“Para dizer então de uma vez: a norma escolar (a tal norma “culta”) é uma variedade específica do nosso idioma. Ela existe e tem finalidades específicas, para as quais é insubstituível, exatamente como acontece na França, na Nicarágua ou em Mianmar. E é ótimo dominar bem essa variedade. Ela abre muitas portas.
Muitas.
Mas ela não é intrinsecamente melhor que a nossa língua de rua, do sofá. Assim como um terno não é intrinsecamente melhor que uma bermuda e uma camiseta. O terno pode ser mais caro, pode ser mais sofisticado, mas nem sempre é a melhor escolha – nem em termos de adequação nem (muito menos) em termos de correção.”
― Caetano W. Galindo, Latim em pó: Um passeio pela formação do nosso português