Alex

“War, then, is not a relation between men, but between states; in war individuals are enemies wholly by chance, not as men, not even as citizens, but only as soldiers; not as member of their country, but only as its defenders. In a word, a state can have as an enemy only another state, not men, becuase there can be no real relations between things possessing different intrinsic natures.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

“They are not policies to be addressed or problems to be solved, but abstract ideas to rally behind.”
― Reza Aslan, How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror

“That's what cool about rock. It's as if the songs were more alive than the people. It's as if the drums and the guitars electrified our veins. It makes you want to leave the toccata and go throw stones at La Moneda. But the truth is that the following day we're all walking with our heads hanging down, sleepy, trying to read the history chapter in the last minutes before the quiz.”
― Antonio Skármeta, Los días del arcoíris

“Perhaps, if I had a new fountain pen instead of this wreck, or a fresh bouquet of, say, twenty beautifully sharpened pencils in a slim vase, and a ream of ivory smooth paper instead of these, let me see, thirteen, fourteen more or less frumpled sheets . . . I might start writing the unknown thing I want to write; unknown, except for a vague shoe-shaped outline, the infusorial quiver of which I feel in my restless bones, a feeling of shchekotiki . . . half-tingle, half-tickles, when you are trying to remember something or understand something or find something, and probably your bladder is full, and your nerves are on edge, but the combination is on the whole not unpleasant ( if not protracted) and produces a minor orgasm or 'petit éternuement intérieur' when at last you find the picture-puzzle piece which exactly fits the gap.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Bend Sinister