Félix J. Palma

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?

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.

And hearing her breathe softly by his side, Wells understood that, as so often happened, his wife knew what he wanted so much better than he did, and that if only he had asked her, he could have saved all that time he taken coming to a decision which, in addition, now proved to be the wrong one. Yes, he told himself, sometimes the best way to find out what we want is to choose what we do not want.

Man needed to dream. Yes, he needed to believe in illusions, to aspire to something more than the miserable, hostile life that suffocated him.

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

It might even teach Murray that while finding true love was one of the most wonderful things that could happen to you in life, finding a friend was equally splendid.

Why had his mother gone to the trouble of bringing him into the world if the most exciting moment in his life was having been made lame by a bayonet?

The whole world was no more than the precise length of each moment that separated them.

Yes, he would look for her, whether to delight in the joys of spring together or to plunge into the abyss. He would look for her because he loved her. And somehow this would lessen the lie Claire was living. For, in the end, the girl's love was reciprocated, and Tom's love, like Shackleton's, was also unattainable, lost in the ether, unable to its way to her.

...the passage of time, which transformed the volatile present into that finished, unalterable painting called the past, a canvas man always executed blindly, with erratic brushstrokes that only made sense when one stepped far enough away from it to be able to admire it as a whole. -pg. 19

[A] writer__ 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__ 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.

There is little more I can add short of dissecting the man, or going into intimate details such as the modest proportions and slight southeasterly curvature of his manhood.

Books make me happy, the help me escape from reality.

...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.

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

When he saw the lovers in the midst of the encircling crowd, Wells smiled once more, hoping that what he had thought moments before when he saw the smile appear on the girl's lips was true; that the love between Murray and Emma was permanent and unchanging; that in each universe, each reality, each and every world where their eyes met, they could not help but fall in love.

...that the love between Murray and Emma was permanent and changing; that in each universe, each reality, each and every world where their eyes met, they could not help but fall in love.

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.