Félix J. Palma

“Hinter jeder Erfindung steckt die Anstrengung eines Menschen, ein der Lösung eines Problems geweihtes Leben, um einen Mechanismus zu erfinden, der den Menschen überlebt und dann zu der Welt gehört, die ohne ihn weitergeht. Solange es Menschen gibt, die sich nicht damit begnügen, die Früchte der Bäume zu verzehren oder Trommeln zu schlagen, damit es regnet, die sich entschließen, ihre Intelligenz zu nutzen, um über die Rolle eines Parasiten im Garten Gottes hinauszuwachsen, so lange wird die Wissenschaft nicht sterben.”

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

“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.”

“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?”

“[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.”

“Had I known dreaming would one day become impossible, I would never have stopped doing it.”

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

“Man has a thousand plans, Heaven but one..”

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

“The saddest thing in the world is to see a man die wearing the forlorn expression of someone who has failed to fulfill his dreams.”

“True history is almost invisible. It flows like an underground spring. It takes place in the shadows, and in silence.. And only a chosen few know what that history is.”

“We are the authors of our own fate-we write it each day with every one of our actions.”

“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?”

“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.”

“Sometimes the best way to find out what we want is to choose what we do not want.”

“Time could only be seen in the falling leaves, a wound that healed, a woodworm's tunneling, rust that spread, and hearts that grew weary. Without anyone to discern it, time was nothing, nothing at all.”

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

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

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

“He had learned from experience that what he succeeded in putting down on paper was only ever a pale reflection of what he had imagined, and so he had come to accept that this would only be half as good as the original, half as acceptable as the flawless, unachievable novel that had acted as a guide, and which he imagined pulsating mockingly behind each book like some ghostly presence.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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”

“If Wells recognized any merit in [Henry] James, it was his undeniable talent for using very long sentences in order to say nothing at all. p. 516”

“¿Se han preguntado alguna vez qué es lo que convierte en responsables a los hombres? Yo se lo diré: que solo tienen una oportunidad de hacer cada cosa. Si existieran máquinas que nos permitieran corregir hasta nuestros errores más estúpidos viviríamos en un mundo lleno de irresponsables.”

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

“Y es que hay mujeres y mujeres y hombres y hombres, y no basta con barajarlos y elegir una carta de cada mazo y creer que el resultado es una pareja.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It is a question of will, Mr. Wells," he said, striving to imbue his slurred voice with a tone of authority. "That's all.”

“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.”

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

“(...) el tiempo nunca se pierde tratando de conseguir un sueño.”

“(...) ¿qué era el tiempo si nadie podía medirlo, si nada podía acusar su paso? El tiempo solo se mostraba en las hojas secas, en las heridas que cicatrizaban, en la carcoma que devoraba, en el óxido que se extendía, y en los corazones que se cansaban. Si nadie estaba allí para señalarlo, el tiempo no era nada, absolutamente nada.”