American Gods by Neil Gaiman, r. Jul. 2014

p. 50 His motel was a good two miles away, but after spending three years in prison he was relishing the idea that he could simply walk and walk, forever if need be. He could keep walking north, and wind up in Alaska, or head south, to Mexico and beyond. He could walk to Patagonia, or to Tierra del Fuego.

p. 153 Laura looked up at him with dead blue eyes. "I want to be alive again," she said. "Not in this half-life. I want to be really alive. I want to feel my heart pumping in my chest again. I want to feel blood moving through me - hot, and salty, and real. It's weird, you don't think you can feel it, the blood, but believe me, when it stops flowing, you'll know."

p. 215 There had been a snowstorm in the night: six inches had fallen, perhaps more. The corner of the town that Shadow could see from his window, dirty and run-down, had been transformed into somewhere clean and different: these houses were not abandoned and forgotten, they were frosted into elegance. The streets had vanished completely, lost beneath a white field of snow.

p. 289 "And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell to no man, for a secret that no one knows but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be."

p. 323 We draw our lines around these moments of pain, and remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. They are covered with a smooth, safe, nacreous layer to let them slip, pearllike, from our souls without real pain. Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives. A life that is, like any other, unlike any other.

p. 395 "Would you believe that all the gods that people have ever imagined are still with us today?"

p. 439 There was only one guy in the whole Bible Jesus ever personally promised a place with him in Paradise. Not Peter, not Paul, not any of those guys. He was a convicted thief, being executed. So don't knock the guys on death row. Maybe they know something you don't.

p. 444 "As for the why of it...I guess it's just another one of life's little mysteries." "I'm tired of mysteries." "Yeah? I think they add a kind of zest to the world. Like salt in a stew.

p. 585 Shadow smiled at the pretty women, because they made him feel pleasantly male, and he smiled at the other women too, because he was having a good time.

Labyrinths by Jorge Borges, r. May 2014

p. 21 ...I sensed that the Chief somehow feared people of my race - for the innumerable ancestors who merge within me.

p. 143 In the first volume of Parerga und Paralipomena I read again that everything which can happen to a man, from the instant of his birth until his death, has been preordained by him. Thus, every negligence is deliberate, every humiliation a penitence, every failure a mysterious victory, every death a suicide.

p. 145 Meanwhile we reveled in the great days and nights of a successful war. In the very air we breathed there was a feeling not unlike love. Our hearts beat with amazement and exaltation, as if we sensed the sea nearby.... Every man aspires to the fullness of life, that is, to the sum of experiences which he is capable of enjoying; nor is there a man unafraid of being cheated out of some part of his infinite patrimony.

p. 196 Why does it disturb us that the map be included in the map and the thousand and one nights in the book of the Thousand and One Nights? Why does it disturb us that Don Quixote be a reader of the Quixote and Hamlet a spectator of Hamlet? I believe I have found the reason: these inversions suggest that if the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictitious. In 1833, Carlyle observed that the history of the universe is an infinite sacred book that all men write and read and try to understand, and in which they are also written.

p. 212 What is a divine mind? the reader will perhaps inquire. There is not a theologian who does no define it; I prefer an example. The steps a man takes from the day of his birth until that of his death trace in time and inconceivable figure. The Divine Mind intuitively grasps that form immediately, as men do a triangle. This figure (perhaps) has its given function in the economy of the universe.

p. 233 No man has ever lived in the past, and none will live in the future; the present alone is the form of all life, and is its sure possession which can never be taken from it...

p. 243 Deeds which populate the dimensions of space and which reach their end when someone dies may cause us wonderment, but one thing, or an infinite number of things, dies in every final agony, unless there is a universal memory as the theosophists have conjectured. In time there was a day that extinguished the last eyes to see Christ; the battle of Junin and the love of Helen dies with the death of a man. What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose? The voice of Macedonio Fernandez, the image of a red horse int he vacant lot at Serrano and Charcas, a bar of sulphur in the drawer of a mahogany desk?

Uttermost Part of the Earth by E. Lucas Bridges, r. Apr. 2014

p. 296 A glance at the comparatively recent history of witchcraft in England, Europe, and America should persuade one not to judge the On a too harshly. They were in the act of taking, in one generation or less, the stride from prehistoric man to a civilization that has taken us thousands of years to accomplish, if we can be said to have accomplished it yet.

p. 336 Across leagues of wooded hills up the forty-mile length of Lake Kami, Talimeoat and I gazed long and silently towards a glorious sunset. I knew that he was searching the distance for any sign of smoke from the camp-fires of friends or foes. After a while his vigilance relaxed and, lying near me, he seemed to become oblivious to my presence. Feeling the chill of evening, I was on the point of suggesting a move, when he heaved a deep sigh and said to himself, as softly as an On a could say anything:

"Yak haruin. ("My country.")

That sigh followed by those gentle words, so unusual for one of his kind - was it caused by a vision of the not far distant future, when the Indian hunter would roam his quiet woods no more; when the light wraith from his camp fire would five place to the smoke from saw-mills; when throbbing engines and hooting sirens would shatter for ever the age-old silence?

p. 343 I vividly recall a dance to which I was invited by some friends. From among the onlookers, I watched the couples waltzing. I had never before seen men and women in evening dress. This was supposed to be a children's ball, yet a great many of those children were quite grown up. The girls, with their radiant faces and their brightly colored, not too abundant clothing, looked magically beautiful to me. With the music and the lights, they dazzled me - and made me sad. I realized, for the first time, how much grace and gaiety I had missed; pleasures of early manhood that would never come to me again. I saw then that, right through life, I should be unlike other men; unable to throw myself whole-heartedly into such a joyous party as I was then watching. Yet, as my thoughts turned from civilization to the snowy forests and windswept heights of my native land, I echoed the words of Adam Lindsay Gordon's dying jockey: "I'd live the same life over if I had to live it again."

p. 513 When I was demobilized in January, 1919, I took a short lease of a house four miles from Despard's home; and happy indeed I was with my precious little wife and [our daughter] Stephanie. We had three acres of land and a car. But life was too easy. That thrice-accursed - or thrice-blessed - wanderlust was on me and I could not rest in such peaceful surroundings. The only work I felt fitted for was breaking new trails; reclaiming unused land; and the thought of the thousands of leagues in distant parts of the world, unpeopled and producing nothing, continually troubled me.

Barren Lives by Graciliano Ramos, r. Apr. 2014

p. 126

Now she wanted to know what the boys were going to do when they grew up.

"Herd cattle," was Fabiano's opinion.

Vitoria made a face of disgust, shaking her head in disagreement at the risk of causing the tin trunk to fall. Our Lady save them from such misfortune! Herd cattle! What an idea! They were going to a far country, where they would forget the brushland with its hills and hollows, its pebbles, its dry rivers, thorns, vultures, dying cattle, and dying people. They would never com back; they would resist the homesickness that attacks backlanders in green country. Were they to die of sadness for lack of thorns? They would settle down far away and would take on new ways.

The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Machado de Assis, r. Mar. 2014

p. xvii …any writer has the right to look for "spices" in the work of any other writer, but the "final sauce" has to be of his or her own making.

p. 9 An uncle of mine, a canon with full prebend, liked to say that love of temporal glory was the perdition of souls, who should covet only eternal glory. To which another uncle, an officer in one of those old infantry regiments called terços, would retort that love of glory was the most truly human thing there was in a man and, consequently, his most genuine attribute.

p. 18 The minute that passes doesn't matter to time, only the minute that's coming. The minute that's coming is strong, merry, it thinks it carries eternity in itself and it carries death, and it perishes just like the other one, but time carries on.

p. 32 What was it that my old primary teacher wanted, after all? Memorization and behavior in the classroom. Nothing more, nothing less than what life, the final class, wants, with the difference that if you put fear into me, you never put anger.

p. 46 And that was how I disembarked in Lisbon and continued on to Coimbra. The university was waiting for me with its difficult subjects. I studied them in a very mediocre way, but even so I didn't lose my law degree. They gave it to me with all the solemnity of the occasion, following years of custom, a beautiful ceremony that filled me with pride and nostalgia - mostly nostalgia.

p. 53 The sensuality of boredom: memorize that expression, reader, keep it, examine it, and if you can't get to understand it you may conclude that you're ignorant of one of the most subtle sensations of this world and that time.

p. 58 Fear obscurity, Brás, flee from the negligible. Men are worth something in different ways, and the surest one of all is being worthy in the opinions of other men.

p. 86 So I, Brás Cubas, discovered a sublime law, the law of the equivalencies of windows, and I established the fact that the method of compensating for a closed window is to open another, so that morality can continuously aerate one's conscience.

p. 110 The world may have been too small for Alexander, but the eaves of a garret are an infinity for swallows. Take a look now at the neutrality of this globe that carries us through space like a lifeboat heading for shore: today a virtuous couple sleeps on the same plot of ground that once held a sinning couple. Tomorrow a churchman may sleep there, then a murderer, then a blacksmith, then a poet, and they will all bless that corner of earth that gave them a few illusions.

p. 111 …the main defect of this book is you, reader. You're in a hurry to grow old and the book moves slowly.

p. 117 The intensity of love was the same, the difference was that the flame had lost the mad brightness of the early days and had become a simple sheaf of rays, peaceful and content, as with marriages.

p. 143 As I contemplated how it chastely and completely covered her knee, I made a subtle discovery, to wit, that nature foresaw human clothing, a condition necessary for the development of our species. Habitual nudity, given the multiplicity of the works and cares of the individual, would tend to dull the senses and retard sex, while clothing, deceiving nature, sharpens and attracts desires, activates them, reproduces them, and consequently, drives civilization. A blessed custom that gave us Othello and transatlantic packets.

p. 158 …public opinion is a good glue for domestic institutions.

p. 161 … Uninstructed reader, if you don't keep the letters from your youth, you won't get to know the philosophy of old pages someday, you won't enjoy the pleasure of seeing yourself from a distance, in the shadows, with a three-cornered hat, seven-league boots, and a long Assyrian beard, dancing to the sound of Anachreonic pipes. Keep the letters of your youth! Or, if the three-cornered hat doesn't suit you, I'll use the expression of an old sailor, a friend of the Cotrims. I'll say that if you keep the letters of your youth, you'll find a chance to "sing a bit of nostalgia." It seems that our sailors give that name to songs of the land sung on the high seas. As a poetic expression it's something that can make you even sadder.

p. 165 We kill time; time buries us.

p. 166 Yes, it was fitting for me to be a father. The life of a celibate may have certain advantages of its own, but they would be tenuous and purchased at the price of loneliness.

p. 181 Good Lord! You've got to be a man! Be strong! Fight! Conquer! Dominate! Fifty is the age of science and government. Courage, Brás Cubas. Don't turn fool on me. What have you got to do with that succession from ruin to ruin, from flower to flower? Try to savor life. And be aware that the worst philosophy is that of the weeper who lies down on the riverbank to mourn the incessant flow of the waters. Their duty is never to stop. Make an adjustment to the law and try to take advantage of it.

p. 194 Why is is that a pretty woman looks into a mirror so much if not because she finds herself pretty and, therefore, it gives her a certain superiority over a multitude of women less pretty or absolutely ugly? Conscience is just the same. It looks at itself quite often when it finds itself pretty. Nor is remorse anything else but the twitch of a conscience that sees itself repugnant.

p. 195 …man executes, to the turn of the wheel of the great mystery, a double movement of rotation and translation. Its days are unequal, like those of Jupiter, and they comprise its more or less long year.

The Saddest Pleasure by Moritz Thomsen, r. Mar. 2014

p. xii Whatever else travel is, it is also an occasion to dream and remember. You sit in an alien landscape and you remember all the people who have been awful to you. You have nightmares in strange beds. You remember episodes that you have not thought of for years and but for that noise from the street or that powerful odor of jasmine you might have forgotten.

p. 19 I walk up and down through the empty hall examining everything carefully in the brightly lit cases, delighted to discover that there is absolutely nothing there that I would wish to own. I had spent forty years modestly collecting this kind of garbage and then, let us hope, grown wiser, the next twenty years giving it away.

p. 27 Into that chill building rushes a great warm, soft, languorous movement of tropical southern air that is simply amazing in its power to seduce. It is the sweet air of Brazil...

p. 46 My curiosity is too easily satisfied - or rather I have learned that the fascination of a strange place is centered in its people rather than in its views and monuments.

p. 76 Here is what is horrible about dying, I decide: not that you are obliterated by death but that everything you love is also obliterated. The eyes close for the last time, the brain deprived of oxygen comes unplugged, and everything, everything is destroyed, the world disintegrates - trees, lakes, mountains, children, wind and sunshine, the sea, canoes floating across tranquil rivers, ponds full of frogs, night and the stars, music and the music of silence.... [but] death destroys not only everything we love, but everything we hate as well. Our rages, our betrayals, our failures, our capacity for evil. It is all destroyed. How can death, then, be anything but a friend since so much more pain than joy is obliterated.

p. 83 And what suffering won't a man endure to live in his own hut on his own land, proud and half-mad with the delusion that to some extent he is in control of his own destiny.

p. 90 What is heaven for most of us if it is not the satisfaction of having worked hard for yourself, and of knowing that after you have eaten well that you will lie down, make love, and fall into the deep eight-hour sleep of total obliteration that you have earned?

p. 106 [Salvador] is a city where, underneath the normal pursuits, the people in it seem to be thinking of nothing else but their power to attract and of the great psychic charges that are going off between people in their most casual encounters. Connections are being made; people are looking at one another and with innocent delight.

p. 135 It is intensely moving to be in a city where everyone believes in God, and I consider joining them, not because I believe in God, but because, though the spectacle is depressing for its ritual, I believe in the emotion that has joined them together.

p. 171 If life has any meaning at all toward the end, it is certainly only in one's ability to draw from the well of memory a satisfying amount of intense experience to contemplate, for the things that are forgotten are only symbols for the parts of us that have already died. Part of the middle-class tragedy lies in the facility with which intense experience can be synthesized and bought.

p. 206 When I refuse to cook for them and drag them off to some restaurant to eat strange food that is past their comprehension, I feel a vague guilt now as though I were taking them to a pornographic movie that would by teaching perverse techniques confuse and complicate the pure, straightforward intensity of their romantic and passionate sensibilities.

p. 236 Are we not all born with a certain bias, an innate proclivity for feeling either that man is more good than bad or that he is more bad than good? This basic way of looking at mankind probably even determines the way we vote. Do we join a political party that demands more freedom to more nearly achieve our potential, or a party that wants more restrictive laws to curtail our evil instincts? Did I, who had always believed in more freedom, still believe in the face of the abuses that had been committed in its name?

p. 270 In a larger sense home, that symbol of stability, is only one more concept being shattered by a crazy world where whole nations are stood against the wall and where millions are driven to clog the roads as they stagger toward another border and a temporary haven. There is no way to buy or beg continuity; there is no spot on earth from which one may not be driven. Home is where you are; home is where you find yourself. (Reading that sentence over and giving it a double meaning I note with a glow of pride that we have arrived at the edge of profundity.) It is that cubic space that the body claims - if roofed, that area where you store your dirty clothes and your books.

p. 273 Man is most godlike when he sweats; the potential moral beauty of man lies in this simplest of things; man doing well something that he loves doing - the juggler juggling, the baker baking bread, the teacher before a class of children; a farmer hoeing out a row of corn. Even the trained killer who kills well fulfills, in some inscrutable way, his deepest contract with life and forgets for a time his own mortality, that stinking death that awaits him, too.

Brazil on the Rise by Larry Rohter, r. Mar. 2014

p. 82 In Brazil, work may be a necessity and can sometimes bring satisfaction. But learning to enjoy one's time on earth is an art, and those who have mastered that art are held in high esteem.

p. 249 But until it throws off the inferiority complex that has dogged it for so long, Brazil is likely to remain yoked to a foreign policy that is essentially reactive, and the rest of the world will have to continue to tread lightly if it wants to gain Brazil's cooperation and avoid giving offense.