A Hora da Estrela by Clarice Lispector, r. Jun. 2018 and Mar. 2025

p. 27 Essa moça não sabia que ela era o que era, assim como um cachorro não sabe que é cachorro. Daí não se sentir infeliz. A única coisa que queria era viver. Não sabia para quê, não se indagava.

p. 36 Pensando bem: quem não é um acaso na vida? Quanto a mim, só me livro de ser apenas um acaso porque escrevo, o que é um ato que é um fato.

p. 39 Em todo casa o futuro parecia vir a ser muito melhor. Pelo menos o futuro tinha a vantagem de não ser o presente...

p. 39 Será que entrando na semente de sua vida estarei como que violando o segredo dos faraós? Terei castigo de morte por falar de uma vida que contém como todas as nossas vidas um segredo inviolável?

p. 47 Enfim o que fosse acontecer, aconteceria. E por enquanto nada acontecia, os dois não sabiam inventar acontecimentos.

p. 60 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 pela areia. Eu não quero provocar porque dói.

p. 69 - Eu sou sozinha no mundo e não acredito em ninguém, todos mentem, às vezes até na hora do amor, eu não acho que um ser fale com o outro, a verdade só me vem quando estou sozinha.

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p. 6 One way of getting is not looking, one way of having is not asking and only believing that the silence I believe to be inside me is the answer to my – to my mystery.

p. 7 Who hasn't ever wondered: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?

p. 10 ...we live exclusively in the present because it is always eternally today and tomorrow will be a today, eternity is the state of things at this very moment.

p. 12 I write because I have nothing else to do in the world: I was left over and there is no place for me in the world of men. I write because I'm desperate and I'm tired, I can no longer bear the routine of being me and if not for the always novelty that is writing, I would die symbolically every day. But I am prepared to slip out discreetly through the back exit. I've experienced almost everything, including passion and its despair. And now I'd only like to have what I would have been and never was.

p. 18 Meanwhile the clouds are white and the sky is all blue. Why so much God. Why not a little for men.

p. 24 So she protected herself from death by living less, consuming so little of her life that she'd never run out. This savings gave her a little security since you can't fall farther than the ground. Did she feel she was living for nothing? I'm not sure, but I don't think so. Only once did she ask a tragic question: who am I? It frightened her so much that she completely stopped thinking.

p. 54 The air? You can't tell everything because the everything is a hollow nothing.

p. 63 She vaguely thought while ringing the doorbell: grass is so easy and simple. She had unprompted and stray thoughts because even though she was at random she possessed much inner freedom.

p. 72 The worst part is that I have to forgive them. We must reach such a nothing that we indifferently love or don't love the criminal who kills us. But I'm not sure of myself: I have to ask, though I don't know who can answer, if I really have to love the one who slays me and ask who amongst you slays me. And my life stronger than myself, replies that it wants revenge at all costs and replies that I must struggle like someone drowning, even if I die in the end. If that's the way it is, so be it.

p. 76 As soon as you discover the truth it's already gone: the moment passed. I ask: what is? Reply: it's not.

p. 77 My God, I just remembered that we die. But – but me too?!

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, r. Nov. 2013

p. xvi I learned - from actors and from audiences - how to shape a scene, how to build tension, and - above all - the necessity of being harsh with your own material, excising or rewriting anything that doesn't work. I learned to separate the story from the writing, probably the most important thing that any storyteller has to learn...

p. xx Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along- the same person that I am today. I never felt that I spoke childishly. I never felt that my emotions and desires were somehow less real than adult emotions and desires.

p. xx Children are a perpetual, self-renewing underclass, helpless to escape from the decisions of adults until they become adults themselves.

p. xxiv Why else do we read fiction, anyway? Not to be impressed by somebody's dazzling language - or at least I hope that's not our reason. I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: The mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about ourself.

p. xxv The "true" story is not the one that exists in my mind; it is certainly not the written words on the bound paper that you hold in your hands. The story in my mind is nothing but a hope; the text of the story is the tool I created in order to try to make that hope a reality. The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my text, but then transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears.

p. 35 "As a species, we have evolved to survive. And the way we do it is by straining and straining and, at last, every few generations, giving birth to genius. The one who invents the wheel. And light. And flight. The one who builds a city, a nation, and empire."

p. 35 "Human beings are free except when humanity needs them."

p. 108 "But they made him a commander and so he has to act like one. He doesn't know what he's doing. He's winning, but that scares him worst of all, because he doesn't know why he's winning, except that I have something to do with it. Any minute somebody could find out that Rosen isn't some magic Israeli general who can win no matter what. He doesn't know why anybody wins or loses. Nobody does."

Albert Schweitzer: Prophet in the Wilderness by Hermann Hagedorn, r. May 2013

p. 76 Difficult as it was for a mind trained in the humanities, to grapple with scientific formula, he welcomed the challenge. It was thrilling to him to be working with men who recognized that they must justify with facts every statement they made.

p. 139 The flight from rationalism, the flight from thinking, had for a generation been bad enough in all conscience, but never had there been such organized efforts by social, political, and even religious bodies to discredit individual thinking and persuade men to yield their minds to the authority of groups seeking strength not in ideas but in an enforced unanimity. Everything a man saw or read, everyone he encountered, the associations which claimed his loyalty, all drove in on him the same propaganda of self-distrust and dependence. Men seemed no longer to have any spiritual self-confidence. Efficient, no doubt, they were, in material things, yes, but mentally and spiritually stunted. How incredible that a generation, which had achieved so much in discovery and invention, could sink so low as to relinquish its right to think for itself. What spiritual bankruptcy!

p. 156 It is the fate of every truth that it shall be a subject for laughter before it is generally recognized.

p. 168 "Pshaw, you get used to anything," responded the Doctor. "You simply have to. It all depends on your living for something. Most people nowadays live against something."