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“A América Latina não aplica em seu próprio benefício os resultados da investigação científica pela simples razão de que não tem nenhuma, e em consequência se condena a padecer a tecnologia dos poderosos, que castiga e desloca as matérias-primas naturais. Até agora, a América Latina foi incapaz de criar uma tecnologia própria para sustentar e defender seu próprio desenvolvimento.”

“Nunca existiu nos chamados mercados internacionais o chamado livre jogo da oferta e da procura, e sim uma ditadura, sempre em proveito dos países capitalistas desenvolvidos.”

“We owe a great deal to the grandly expressive female hysterics of the late XIX and early XX centuries. Their apparently inexplicable symptoms (…) were asking subversive questions about femininity: what does it mean to be a woman? What should a woman be? Who is her body supposed to please and what is it for? If she is required to cancel out her own desires, what is she supposed to do with them?”

“It is in my mind to tell you that you stand like a dancer, like an ogre, like a shaman, like a child in rage. You are certain of your gravity. You are holding your breath. Stars lay their dust on you. Foxes play by your feet. Light passes through you. What holds you together might come unstuck as things that holds us together sometimes do.”

Si recuerdo correctamente, los escritores siempre encuentran una justificación para sus libros, aunque no veo razón para que uno tenga que justificarse por tener una ocupación tan tranquila y pacífica. Los militares al parecer nunca parecen justificarse por matar; sin embargo, los novelistas se sienten avergonzados por escribir algún hermoso libro del que no se puede estar seguro que vaya a ser leído por nadie.

“Este tipo de experiencias nos pueden servir para pensar en otras formas de hacer y funcionar. La distopía, en el fondo, se hace sola, ya se está haciendo: el turismo estará cada vez en manos de los más ricos; las ciudades, cada vez más inhabitables, se centrarán en el trabajo y el lujo; la autorrealización neoliberal se afianzará más como un medio de autoexpresión en sí mismo…”

“Yo creo que es evidente que la actividad profesional de un hotel […] cuadra muy mal con ese entorno de felicidad, con este entorno de que todos tenemos derecho a hacer lo que queramos. ¿Qué ocurre cuando se juntan, como aquí, grupos de personas y todos tienen derecho a querer hacer su vida, y todos tienen derecho a la propiedad, y todos tienen derecho a tener tiempo libre?

“No necesitamos más evidencia empírica de los males de la clase dominante, sino que la clase subordinada se convenza de que lo que piensa o dice importa.” (Los fantasmas de mi vida, Mark Fisher)

“Al convencer al trabajador de que merecía pasar sus vacaciones ahí en algún momento de su vida, transformaban un resort de 4 o 5 estrellas en un bien de interés cultural. En resumen, estaban patrimonializando una forma de vivir y, sobre todo, de consumir. […] no solo habían dicho que era posible que otro más pobre te sirviera un batido dentro de una piscina, o comer hasta reventar de un bufé, sino que …

“En realidad, es como si Paraíso fuera una actualización de la propaganda desarrollista a través de la cual el franquismo estableció el turismo como una fuente limpia de riqueza durante los años 50 y 60. […] Fue a través del turismo, pero no solo, como España se integró de pleno en la órbita del capitalismo global y experimentó una aparente modernización”

“Su función no es capturar ninguna imagen nueva o distinta, sino mantener la que ya existe en la mente de todos”

“El Hotel no es solo espacio de trabajo, se erige como una figura moral, de autoridad, de inspiración: ostenta la hegemonía cultural de los que dominan. Intenta imponer a esa sala sus gafas de lujo, su visión de ecología (cómo deben ahorrar… en casa, pero ¿qué casa?, ¿el Hotel?), cómo disfrutar de un buen atardecer, e incluso la lengua global en que se comunica, el inglés.”

“El turista (de la clase trabajadora, de clase media) ha viajado tradicionalmente para convertirse en otra cosa, para olvidarse de lo que es”

“[…] mi padre dijo, con poco entusiasmo, que, a fin de cuentas, todos los objetos que poblaban la estantería eran ‘un buen resumen de la vida’.”

deborah levy you CANNOT do that to me omggggg

“Oh come on-don’t be ridiculous. Do we ‘want’ what we are given, or are we merely resigned to it? In the matter of children it’s a lottery-losers, winners-‘blind fate’. You can’t say that we deserve her simply because we had her, as you can’t say we had her because we deserve her. She has no say in the matter, either-but she doesn’t realize, yet. As one day she will.”

“Once out of place, one can never be in place.
For once out, the concatenation is broken.
A corollary: those in have no idea that they are in. For they have no idea of out.
Only those out have an idea. For out sharpens the brain like a razor-sharp scimitar while in is a browsing meek-necked creature in a herd in a pen oblivious.”

“The revolt against this destruction is a revolt of the imagination, in favor of subtleties, of pleasures money can’t buy and corporations can’t command, of being producers rather than consumers of meaning, of the slow, the meandering, the disgressive, the exploratory, the numinous, the uncertain.”

“And what about the wrenching goodbyes to friendships? Those friends who are very much alive, yet somehow the bond that held us together has fatally broken. In my experience that sort of break is to do with failing to move on with each other, or simply outgrowing the affection that once held us together.”

“She must not make herself too big or too small. That is to say, she must not constantly undermine herself in order to beg readers to like her, nor must she make herself grander on the page than she actually is in life. It is hard to claim fragility and strength in equal measure, but that mix is what we all are.”

“I have always wanted to write the sort of book that I find it impossible to talk about afterwards, the sort of book that makes it impossible for me to withstand the gaze of others. But what degree of shame could possibly be conveyed by the writing of a book which seeks to measure up to the events I experienced in my twelfth year.”

“Yet who can say that an incident following in the wake of another is not lived in the shadow of the first? And who can say that the natural order of events does not carry meaning?”

“The fact that I experienced such inertia and nothingness is something that cannot be denied. It is the ultimate truth.
It is the bond between the little girl of 1952 and the woman who is writing this manuscript.”

“The fact that I have put it into writing does not make it any more significant. It remains what it has always been since 1952 - something akin to madness and death, to which I have never ceased to compare the other events in my life in order to assess their degree of pain, without finding anything that compares to it.”
“I want to breath life into it and strip it of its sacred aura”

“I believe that for months, maybe even years, I waited for the scene to be repeated. I was positive it would happen again. […] I was on alert as soon as they raised their voices; I would scrutinize my father, his expressions, his hands. In every sudden silence I would read the omens of disaster. Every day at school I wondered wether, on returning home, I would be faced with the aftermath of a tragedy.”

“I considered writing about it to be a forbidden act that would call for punishment.“

“Later on, I would say to certain men: ‘My father tried to kill my mother just before I turned twelve.’ The fact that I wanted to tell them this meant that I was crazy about them. All were quiet after hearing the sentence.”

“How could I throw away her ghostly thoughts speaking to me from these decaying books?”

“Did I mock the dreamer in my mother and then insult her for having no dreams?”

“Yet what sort of love would demand that she conceal her talent?”