Felix J. Palma Quotes

[A] writer's most powerful weapon, his true strength, was his intuition, and regardless of whether he had any talent, if the critics combined to discredit an author's nose for things, he would be reduced to a fearful creature who took a mistakenly guarded, absurdly cautious approach to his work, which would end up stifling his latent genius.

Perhaps love is a sentiment shared by other species in the universe. But the love that a human being can generate is exclusively his own and will die with him. After that, the universe, perhpas despite its unfathomable vastness, its apparent infinity, will no longer be complete.

For the very first time Andrew realized that life, real life, had no connection with the way people spent their days, whose lips they kissed, what medals were pinned on them, or the shoes they mended. Life, real life went on soundlessly ... ultimately there was no difference between Queen Victoria and the most wretched beggar in London: both were complex machines made up of bone, organ, and tissue, whose fuel was the breath of God.

I'm convinced the true history of our time isn't what we read in newspapers or books ... True history is almost invisible. It flows like an underground spring. It takes place in the shadows, and in silence, George. And only a chosen few know what that history is.

As if he had turned into one of those sarcophagi lined with bristling nails. He wanted to flee himself, unshackle himself from the excruciating substance he was made of, but he was trapped inside the martyred flesh.

...the wrath of God pales beside that of man.

Time is a river sweeping away all that is born towards the darkest shore.

Ultimately it was man's limited senses which established the boundaries of the world.

That is why I need you to take into account the elasticity of time, its ability to expand or contract like an accordion regardless of clocks. I am sure this is something you will have experienced frequently in your own lives, depending on which side of the bathroom door you found yourselves. In Andrew's case, time expanded in his mind, creating an eternity out of a few seconds. I am going to describe the scene from that perspective, and therefore ask you not to blame my inept storytelling for the discrepancies you will no doubt perceive between the events and their correlation in time. pg. 61

Writers perform an extremely important role: they make others dream, those who are unable to dream for themselves. And everyone needs to dream. Could there be any more important job in life than that?

Before cruelly vilifying them from a great height, the mudslingers at newspapers and journals should bear in mind that all artistic endeavors were by and large a mixture of effort and imagination, the embodiment of a solitary endeavor, of a sometimes long-nurtured dream, when they were not a desperate bid to give life meaning.

But there are stories that cannot begin at their beginning, and perhaps this is one of them.

He was back at the point of departure, at the place that filled writers with dread and excitement, for this was where they must decide which new story to tackle of the many floating in the air, which plot to bind themselves to for a lengthy period; and they had to choose carefully, study each option calmly ... because there were dangerous stories, stories that resisted being inhabited, and stories that pulled you apart while you were writing them ... At that moment, before reverently committing the first word to paper, he could write anything he wanted, and this fired his blood with a powerful sense of freedom, as wonderful as it was fleeting, for he knew it would vanish the moment he chose one story and sacrificed all the others.

The most terrifying thing is sometimes not what we see, but rather what we are forced to imagine.

While finding true love was one of the most splendid things that could happen to you in life, finding a friend was equally splendid.

Wealth brings poverty in its wake, thought Andrew,

I am an artist. And An artist is simply a man who is pulled along by a river: on one side sanity lies, and the other madness, yet he will find no peace on either, as the current of his art drags him away from the everyday life on it's banks, where others watch, unable to help him until he reaches the immensity of the ocean.

I would like you to have it, Mr. Wells" he said, presenting him with the basket,"to remind you that everything is a question of wills

The paths that we choose don't always take us where we want to go. Sometimes they take us where we need to go.

Striving to achieve a dream is never a waste of time.

Merrick belonged to that class of reader who was able to forget with amazing ease the hand moving the characters behind the scenes of the novel.

There are so many books left to read. For that reason alone it is worth going on living. Books make me happy, the help me escape from reality.

And now that Wells had heard him laugh, he wondered whether the so-called Elephant Man had not in fact been smiling at him from the moment he stepped into the room, a warm, friendly smile intended to sooth the discomfort his appearance produced in his guests, a smile no one would ever see.
As he left the room, he felt a tear roll down his cheek.

Somehow this literary genre, which most people condemned, acted as a sort of counterbalance to Charles's soul; it was the ballast that prevented him from lurching into the serious or melancholy, unlike Andrew, who had been unable to adopt his cousin's casual attitude to life, and to whom everything seemed so achingly profound, imbed with that absurd solemnity that the transience of of existence conferred upon even the smallest act.

Intelligence could not thrive where there was no change and no necessity for change.

I don't think traveling back in time on an empty stomach is a good idea.