ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ ㅤ memorable excerpts

• a esperança é uma coisa muito dolorosa, muito mais dolorosa que a raiva — a rede de alice, kate quinn
• kitchen, banana yoshimoto
  • the place I like best in this world is the kitchen. no matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it's a kitchen, if it's a place where they make food, it's fine with me
  • the hum of the refrigerator kept me from thinking of my loneliness
  • the scratching of our pens mingled with the sound of raindrops beginning to fall in the transparent stillness of the evening
  • funny, but what made me feel most nostalgic was the yellow-green color of the floor... when I lived there I hated that color, but now that I was to leave it I loved it with all my heart
  • when I finished reading I carefully refolded the letter. the smell of eriko's favorite perfume tugged at my heart. this, too, will disappear after the letter is opened a few more times, I thought. that was the hardest of all
  • I lost all sense of time being divided into seconds. I felt that I was the only person alive and moving in a world brought to a stop. houses always feel like that after someone has died
  • memorizing the recipe, I would make carrot cakes that included a bit of my soul. at the supermarket I would stare at a bright red tomato, loving it for dear life. having known such joy, there was no going back
  • why is it we have so little choice? we live like the lowliest worms. always defeated — defeated we make dinner, we eat, we sleep. everyone we love is dying. still, to cease living is unacceptable
  • that's how they were raised. the short of kindness that makes a person wrap a bell in a handkerchief
• 132 crônicas: cascos & carícias e outros escritos, hilda hilst
  • é bonito ter em casa alguma coisa que não se compreenda
  • alguns homens geniais sugeriram que o problema do homem é o de encontrar alguma substância química que o imunize da barbárie
  • o que é ser humano? entre a verdade e os infernos, seriam dez passos de claridade, dez passos de escuridão?
  • e quem é que você conhece que é civilizado? teu vizinho te engole você dá bom dia e pergunta da criança e do cachorro
  • o que será de nós todos logo mais, se não dilatarmos nossos corações ao infinito?
  • o filósofo nietzsche enlouqueceu abraçado a um cavalo que havia sido barbaramente espancado. enlouqueceu ou não suportou o lúcido desespero da compaixão?
  • tenho pedido a todos que descansem / de tudo o que cansa e mortifica. / mas o homem não cansa.
  • dá para entender o ser humano fazendo tudo para morrer? emporcalhando os ares, os rios, os mares, esburacando o ozônio, e só deixando intacto teu ilustre sovaco?
  • nenhum de nós quer morrer. queremos ficar, ainda que seja a marretadas, no coração do outro. nenhum de nós quer não ser. aliás, como seria não ser mais, já tendo sido um dia?
  • é assim que seria para mim o verdadeiro homem político: poeta no seu sentido mais fundo, intenso e livre. ingênuo a ponto de tomar para si mesmo a dor do outro. e tentar extirpá-la.
• on earth we're briefly gorgeous, ocean vuong
  • when does a war end? when can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?
  • you once told me that the human eye is god's loneliest creation. how so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing. the eye, alone in its socket, doesn't even know there's another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hugry, as empty. opening the front door to the first snowfall of my life, you whispered, "look".
  • to be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lightouse: both shelter and warning at once.
  • a story, after all, is a kind of swallowing. to open a mouth, in speech, is to leave only the bones, which remain untold.
  • sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you've been ruined. ]
  • why did I feel more myself while reaching for him, my hand midair, than I did having touched him?