Alberto Rios Quotes

he woman Caeiro fell in love with. I have no idea who she was, and I intend to never find out, not even out of curiosity. There are things of which the soul refuses to lose its ignorance.

I'm perfectly aware no one's obliged to reciprocate love, and great poets have nothing to do with being great lovers. But there's a transcendent spite...

Let her remain anonymous even to God! ~ Alvaro De Campos

Now I sense the perfume of flowers like seeing a new thing.
I know they smell just as well as I know I existed.
They're things known from the outside.
But now I know with my breathing from the back of my head. ~ Alberto Caeiro

In our day, computer technology and the proliferation of books on CD-ROM have not affected - as far as statistics show - the production and sale of books in their old-fashioned codex form. ~ Alberto Manguel

Numbers never lie, after all: they simply tell different stories depending on the math of the tellers. ~ Luis Alberto Urrea

night-vision goggles with high-definition magnification. Despite the unbearable heat and humidity, Robert wore his long-sleeved elastane top and his favorite pair of dark polyester pants. He didn't care that the outfit made him look unarmed and vulnerable to anyone interested in picking a fight. It'll take them a minute to decide. He ~ Alberto Hazan

To be a seer is to walk softly on the earth and dream. ~ Alberto Villoldo

I consider a dream like I consider a shadow," answered Caeiro, with his usual divine, unexpected promptitude. "A shadow is real, but it's less real than a rock. A dream is real - if it weren't, it wouldn't be a dream - but less real than a thing. That's what being real is like. ~ Alvaro De Campos

But at night, when the library lamps are lit, the outside world disappears and nothing but the space of books remains in existence. ~ Alberto Manguel

Our society accepts the book as a given, but the act of reading
once considered useful and important, as well as potentially dangerous and subversive
is now condescendingly accepted as a pastime, a slow pastime that lacks efficiency and does not contribute to the common good. ~ Alberto Manguel

From the beginning, the highway has always lacked grace-those who worship desert gods know them to favor retribution over the tender dove of forgiveness. In Desolation, doves are at the bottom of the food chain. Tohono O'Odham poet Ofelia Zepeda has pointed out that rosaries and Hail Marys don't work out here. "You need a new kind of prayers," she says "to negotiate with this land. ~ Luis Alberto Urrea

I don't know if I work in order to do something, or in order to know why I can't do what I want to do. ~ Alberto Giacometti

We seem to live a culture that doesn't want blemishes. The vision of most beautiful models ... airbrushed in order to be seen as perfect, infects our notion of how literature should be written. ~ Alberto Manguel

To love is to think.
And I almost forget to feel only from thinking about her.
I don't know what I want at all, even from her, and I don't think about anything but her.
I have a great animated distraction.
When I want to meet her,
I almost feel like not meeting her,
So I don't have to leave her afterwards.
And I prefer thinking about her, because it's like I'm afraid of her.
I don't know what I want at all, and I don't want to know what I want. All I want to do is think about her.
I'm asking nothing of nobody, not even her, except to think. ~ Alberto Caeiro

The dark realization came to him that a difficult and miserable age had begun for him, and he couldn't imagine when it would end. [Puberty] ~ Alberto Moravia

You think I can't get it up anymore, maybe? Lemme tell you, you eat enough garlic and it stands up every time. ~ Alberto Vitale

An editor doesn't just read, he reads well, and reading well is a creative, powerful act. The ancients knew this and it frightened them. Mesopotamian society, for instance, did not want great reading from its scribes, only great writing. Scribes had to submit to a curious ruse: they had to downplay their reading skills lest they antagonize their employer. The Attic poet Menander wrote: "those who can read see twice as well." Ancient autocrats did not want their subjects to see that well. Order relied on obedience, not knowledge and reflection. So even though he was paid to read as much as write messages, the scribe's title cautiously referred to writing alone (scribere = "to write"); and the symbol for Nisaba, the Mesopotamian goddess of scribes, was not a tablet but a stylus. In his excellent book A History of Reading, Alberto Manguel writes, "It was safer for a scribe to be seen not as one who interpreted information, but who merely recorded it for the public good."
In their fear of readers, ancients understood something we have forgotten about the magnitude of readership. Reading breeds the power of an independent mind. When we read well, we are thinking hard for ourselves - this is the essence of freedom. It is also the essence of editing. Editors are scribes liberated to not simply record and disseminate information, but think hard about it, interpret, and ultimately, influence it. ~ Susan Bell

The weight of absence is as much a feature of any library as the constriction of order and space. ~ Alberto Manguel

She's a manner of speaking.
Even the flowers don't come back, or the green leaves.
There are new flowers, new green leaves.
There are other beautiful days.
Nothing comes back, nothing repeats itself, because everything is real. ~ Alberto Caeiro

The world looked to them like a great roll of butcher paper unfurled on a table. ~ Luis Alberto Urrea

Hating your body, or your life, doesn't mean you hate yourself. ~ Emma Rios

The "called" get so puffed up with how important they think their service is to God's success, they assume God will compensate for their lack of parenting skills. A short study in sociological history will reveal this isn't true, never has been true, and likely never will be true of God. ~ Linda Rios Brook

True laziness is the commitment to decrease work and increase efficiency; reduce burden and boost creativity; expand your knowledge and avoid complications; minimize effort and still get it done. ~ Alan Rios

If the book is second-hand, I leave all its markings intact, the spoor of previous readers, fellow-travellers who have recorded their passage by means of scribbled comments, a name on the fly-leaf, a bus ticket to mark a certain page. ~ Alberto Manguel

Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons. ~ Alberto Manguel

I always feel that it is quality of time not quantity of time. ~ Alberto Del Rio

Trust me, my runners aren't going to run one event while looking past it to the second event. When they get on the line for the 10K, that's a do-or-die situation for them. ~ Alberto Salazar

Reading is the occupation of the insomniac par excellence. ~ Alberto Manguel

Histories, chronologies and almanacs offer us the illusion of progress, even though, over and over again, we are given proof that there is no such thing. ~ Alberto Manguel

Jim, I'm not aware of any formal requests from the Senate Judiciary Committee for these kinds of documents. ~ Alberto Gonzales

Anyone who attempts anything original in the world must expect a bit of ridicule. ~ Alberto Juantorena

I was introverted, shy. But if you win a lot you need to be extroverted, or they'll think you're arrogant. ~ Alberto Tomba

We want to promote the great qualities of athletics - and maintain its integrity - all over the world. ~ Alberto Juantorena