she asked god, without fear, if he really believed that people were made of iron in order to bear so many troubles and mortifications.

one hundred years of solitude

it’s always been fascinating to me how things can be simultaneously true and false, how people can be good and bad all in one, how someone can love you in a way that is beautifully selfless while serving themselves ruthlessly.

the seven husbands of evelyn hugo

remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. live it, feel it, cling to it. i want to become acutely aware of all i've taken for granted. when you feel that this may be goodbye, the last time, it hits you harder.

the unabridged journals of sylvia plath

something happened inside of me as i looked out into the vast universe. through that telescope, the world was closer and larger than i'd ever imagined. and it was all so beautiful and overwhelming and – i don't know – it made me aware that there was something inside of me that mattered.

aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe

the heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.

the unbearable lightness of being

only a fool vaunts it and displays his own littleness by bragging to his friends and making capricious demands of his lover. patroclus isn't a fool. he knows that he is less than achilles even in this. humbled by the intensity of achilles' love, he loves him back with all his large, though lesser, heart.

achilles

she had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.

mrs. dalloway

whatever we are doing, wherever we are, it is imperative that we believe in the possibility of change. we cannot allow ourselves to be ensconced in the present, so the very first step is to actively imagine possible futures – futures beyond the prison and beyond capitalism.

the meaning of freedom: and other difficult dialogues

vestidos de farrapos, sujos, semiesfomeados, agressivos, soltando palavrões e fumando pontas de cigarro, eram, em verdade, os donos da cidade, os que a conheciam totalmente, os que totalmente a amavam, os seus poetas.

capitães da areia

a great sorrow, and one that i am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. we can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. we don’t get to choose the people we are.

the goldfinch

when you rang me at truly shocking hours of the night, i loved you. when you kissed me in disgusting public toilets and pouted in hotel bars and made me happy in ways in which it had never even occurred to me that a mangled-up, locked-up person like me could be happy, i loved you. and then, inexplicably, you had the absolute audacity to love me back. can you believe it? sometimes, even now, i still can't.

red, white & royal blue

minha exaustão se prostrava aos pés do pedaço de coisa, adorando infernalmente. o segredo da força era a força, o segredo do amor era o amor – e a joia do mundo é um pedaço opaco de coisa.

a paixão segundo g.h.

when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defensless that i couldn't do it. it was as if what i wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get.

the bell jar

our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others – the empires and their native overseers. in the colonial and neocolonial alchemy, gold changes into scrap metal and food into poison.

open veins of latin america

não é possível a pronúncia do mundo, que é um ato de criação e recriação, se não há amor que o funda. sendo fundamento do diálogo, o amor é, também, diálogo. daí que seja essencialmente tarefa de sujeitos e que não possa verificar-se na relação de dominação.

pedagogia do oprimido

we looked at the sky. so many stars, it seemed like a celebration, a grand, illicit party the galaxy was holding after the humans had been put to bed.

we were liars

why do people have to be this lonely? what's the point of it all? millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. why? was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?

sputnik sweetheart

once you've recognized a person as a person, you can start to love that person well. it's an awful thing to learn, but it's the best thing in the world to know.

the vigilante poets of selwyn academy

deus. eu acho que o problema maior em relação a deus não é crer ou descrer – é sentir ou não sentir. não há uma crença sem o sentimento profundo, enraizado, de que ele existe e está em nós. ou se há, é uma crença completamente falsa, como quase todas que conheço. e eu não sei se creio ou não porque ainda não senti.

limite branco

the universe owes you nothing, kady. it has already given you everything, after all. it was here long before you, and it will go on long after you. the only way it will remember you is to do something worth remembrance.

illuminae

every lesson in the universe had to be taught billions of times, and it never stuck. maybe it was good that the world forgot every lesson, every good and bad memory, every triumph and failure, all of it dying with each generation. perhaps this cultural amnesia spared them all. perhaps if they remembered everything, hope would die instead.

blue lily, lily blue

the truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.

the murder of roger ackroyd

é melhor eu não falar em felicidade ou infelicidade – provoca aquela saudade desmaiada e lilás, aquele perfume de violeta, as águas geladas da maré mansa em espumas de areia. eu não quero provocar porque dói.

a hora da estrela

we didn't speak, just drove out of the city into the countryside on our way to absolutely nowhere, and when we found that perfect spot among the trees, we stopped and looked at each other. swallows swooped through the red sky, back from their adventure, and we held each other underneath the ketchup clouds, willing time to stop and the world to forget us for a while.

ketchup clouds

i took his hand, and part of me wanted to tell him i loved him, but i wasn't sure if i really did. our hearts were broken in the same places. that's something like love, but maybe not quite the thing itself.

turtles all the way down

there’s no freedom quite like the freedom of being constantly underestimated.

the lies of locke lamora

what you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. it also depends on what sort of person you are.

the magician's nephew

he held up his shaky fingers where he could see them better and wondered at the equally weak flutter in his chest. hope was a dangerous, disquieting thing, but he thought perhaps he liked it.

the foxhole court

be true to yourself. but that's something everyone says and no one means. no one wants you to be yourself. they want you to be the version of yourself that they like.

the young elites

i am a collection of oddities, a circus of neurons and electrons: my heart is the ringmaster, my soul is the trapeze artist, and the world is my audience. it sounds strange because it is, and it is, because i am strange.

mosquitoland

there was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.

1984

toda a água me passa entre as palmas abertas, e de repente não sei se as águas nascem de mim, ou para mim fluem. continuo a puxar, não já memória apenas, mas o próprio corpo do rio. sobre a minha pele navegam barcos, e sou também os barcos e o céu que os cobre e os altos choupos que vagarosamente deslizam sobre a película luminosa dos olhos.

ensaio sobre a cegueira

she'd laughed, and if he could have bottled the sound and gotten drunk on it every night, he would have. it terrified him.

six of crows

i wonder if what we feel in our hearts today isn't like these raindrops still falling on us from the soaked leaves above, even though the sky itself long stopped raining. i'm wondering if without our memories, there's nothing for it but for our love to fade and die.

the buried giant

for in dreams we enter a world that is entirely our own. let them swim in the deepest ocean or glide over the highest cloud.

prisoner of azkaban

every now and then i would feel a violent stab of loneliness. the very water i drink, the very air i breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. the pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. i could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning.

the wind-up bird chronicle

children don't know the meaning of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now.

my brilliant friend

there are times when personal experience keeps us from reaching the mountain top and so we let it go because the weight of it is too heavy. and sometimes the mountain top is difficult to reach with all our resources, factual and confessional, so we are just there, collectively grasping, feeling the limitations of knowledge, longing together, yearning for a way to reach that highest point. even this yearning is a way to know.

teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom

we are capable of big lives. a big history. why settle? why choose the practical thing, the mundane thing? we are born to dream and make the things we dream about.

the sun is also a star

it was a sort of ferocious, quiet beauty, the sort that wouldn't let you admire it. the sort of beauty that always hurt.

the dream thieves

i wish i could freeze this moment, right here, right now and live in it forever.

catching fire

the mind is not a book, to be opened at will and examined at leisure. thoughts are not etched on the inside of skulls, to be perused by an invader. the mind is a complex and many-layered thing.

order of the phoenix

a minha alegria acordava a dele, e o céu estava tão azul, e o ar tão claro, que a natureza parecia rir também conosco. são assim as boas horas deste mundo.

dom casmurro

people really are like houses with vast rooms and tiny windows. and maybe it's a good thing, the way we never stop surprising each other.

simon vs. the homo sapiens agenda

why, true heart, are you come hither to lay these charges upon me? will of my own self do all as you have bidden me. draw closer to me, let us once more throw our arms around one another, and find sad comfort in the sharing of our sorrows.

the iliad

it's my experience that people are a lot more sympathetic if they can see you hurting, and for the millionth time in my life, i wish for measles or smallpox or some other easily understood disease, just to make it easier on me and also on them.

all the bright places

be careful of love. it'll twist your brain around and leave you thinking up is down and right is wrong.

the battle of the labyrinth

i feel like i’m broken, – like i don’t fit together anymore. like there’s no more room for me in the world or something. like i’ve overstayed my welcome here on earth, and everyone’s trying to give me hints about that constantly.

forgive me, leonard peacock

for months i'd been stuck, unable to take one step in any new direction. the world kept moving on; i alone was at a standstill. in the autumn, everything took on a desolate cast, the colors swiftly fading before my eyes. the sunlight, the smell of the grass, the faintest patter of rain, everything got on my nerves.

a wild sheep chase

but no artist, i now realize, can be satisfied with art alone. there is a natural craving for recognition which cannot be gain-said.

and then there were none

it's really a wonder that i haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. yet i keep them, because in spite of everything, i still believe that people are really good at heart.

the diary of a young girl

he's kissing me. and when he does, part of me is lost. but it's the part that's twisted and mangled and wrong, and for just that moment, with his hands in my hair and his lips on my mouth, i can pretend that it never existed.

the sea of tranquility

i wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. it's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

to kill a mockingbird

o verão passou muito depressa com o seu sol ardente e suas noites plenas de estrelas. é sempre rápido o tempo da felicidade. o tempo é um ser difícil. quando queremos que ele se prolongue, seja demorado e lento, ele foge às pressas, nem se sente o correr das horas.

o gato malhado e a andorinha sinhá

i don't know why it's so hard for people to admit that sometimes they're just assholes who screw up because they don't expect to get caught.

one of us is lying

you won’t understand what i mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, i think, is to find people who are better than you are – not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving – and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad – or good – it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. but the best, as well.

a little life

eu cato papel, mas não gosto. então eu penso: faz de conta que eu estou sonhando.

quarto de despejo

you may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. that tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. that is your role, your gift.

the night circus

i want to live, but getting close to death is the only way to feel alive. and once you do, it makes you realize that everything you were actually doing before wasn't actually living. it was just making do. call me crazy, but i think we do the best living when the stakes are high.

a gathering of shadows

i can't believe i said it out loud. the truth doesn't set you free, you know. it makes you feel awkward and embarrassed and defenseless and red in the face and horrified and petrified and vulnerable. but free? i don't feel free.

saving francesca

i stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. and i came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.

the amber spyglass

what matters is that you're happy. what matters is your future. what matters is that we get out of here in one piece. what matters is finding the truth of our own lives, not caring about what other people think is the truth of us.

ask the passengers

for some things there are no explanations – no reasons, and so, when these things happen, there is nothing to talk about really. and it is best not to dwell on said things for too long, because you will find that life has no real meaning if you do.

sorta like a rockstar

whatever you are physically... male or female, strong or weak, ill or healthy, – all those things matter less than what your heart contains. if you have the soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. all those other things, they are the glass that contains the lamp, but you are the light inside.

clockwork angel

i could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; i would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. i would know him in death, at the end of the world.

the song of achilles

meeting your soulmate is like walking into a house you've been in before – you will recognize the furniture, the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelves, the contents of drawers: you could find your way around in the dark if you had to.

i'll give you the sun

i've wandered through the real world, and written myself through the darkness of the streets inside me. i see people walking through the city and wonder where they've been, and what the moments of their lives have done to them. if they're anything like me, their moments have held them up and shot them down.

getting the girl

i like how you're neither here nor there. and how there's nowhere else you're meant to be while waiting. you're just sort of suspended.

the statistical probability of love at first sight