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P Quotes

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All P Quotes

“Pedersen was always wooing her. Sometimes he was gracious and kind, but at other times when his failure wearied him he would be cruel and sardonic, with a suggestive tongue whose vice would have scourged her were it not that Marie was impervious, or too deeply inured to mind it. She always grinned at him and fobbed him off with pleasantries, whether he was amorous or acrid. 'God Almighty,' he would groan, 'she is not good for me, this Marie. What can I do for her? She is burning me alive and the Skaggerack could not quench me, not all of it. The devil! What can I do with this? Some day I shall smash her across the eyes, yes, across the eyes.' So you see the man really loved her. ("The Tiger")”

“Pedestrianism, [William Bingley] claims, is the most 'useful' mode of travel, 'if health and strength are not wanting.' 'To a naturalist, it is evidently so; since, by this means, he is enabled to examine the country as he goes along; and when he sees occasion, he can also strike out of the road, amongst the mountains or morasses, in a manner completely independent of all those obstacles that inevitably attend the bringing of carriages or horses.' Bingley has a specific reason here for valuing the combination of freedom and intimacy with one's surroundings enjoyed by the pedestrian, but his rationale is generalisable to other travellers.”

“Pedig valószínű, hogy igazából soha másról nem kellene írnunk, csak erről: a bánatról, a fájó hiányról, a kiszolgáltatottságról és arról, ami néha két ember között történik, ami láthatatlan, mégis hatalmasabb a világbirodalmaknál, erősebb, mint bármely vallás, és gyönyörű, mint az égbolt; a könnyek áttetsző halairól és a szavakról, melyeket Istenhez suttogunk, vagy valakinek, aki nekünk a legfontosabb; a pillanatról, mikor egy nő magába enged, és a láthatár darabokra hullik. Soha másról nem kellene írnunk. Minden tanúsítványnak, minden jelentésnek, a világ minden üzenetének erről kéne szólnia: Ma szomorúság miatt nem tudok bemenni dolgozni. Tegnap megláttam egy szempárt, ezért ma nem tudok bemenni a munkahelyemre. Sajnos ma nincs módomban bemenni, mert a férjem meztelen és lélegzetelállítóan szép. Ma nem alkalmas, mert cserben hagott az élet. A mai találkozón nem tudok részt venni, mert itt odakint egy nő napozik, és a bőre szinte belülről izzik a naptól.”

“Pedro Algorta, a lawyer, showed me the fat dossier about the murder of two women. The double crime had been committed with a knife at the end of 1982, in a Montevideo suburb. The accused, Alma Di Agosto, had confessed. She had been in jail more than a year, and was apparently condemned to rot there for the rest of her life. As is the custom, the police had raped and tortured her. After a month of continuous beatings they had extracted several confessions. Alma Di Agosto's confessions did not much resemble each other, as if she had committed the same murder in many different ways. Different people appeared in each confession, picturesque phantoms without names or addresses, because the electric cattle prod turns anyone into a prolific storyteller. Furthermore, the author demonstrated the agility of an Olympic athlete, the strength of a fairground Amazon, and the dexterity of a professional matador. But the most surprising was the wealth of detail: in each confession, the accused described with millimetric precision clothing, gestures, surroundings, positions, objects..... Alma Di Agosto was blind. Her neighbours, who knew and loved her, were convinced she was guilty: 'Why?' asked the lawyer. 'Because the papers say so.' 'But the papers lie,' said the lawyer. 'But the radio said so too,' explained the neighbours. 'And the TV!”

“Peeling an Orange Between you and a bowl of oranges I lie nude Reading The World’s Illusion through my tears. You reach across me hungry for global fruit, Your bare arm hard, furry and warm on my belly. Your fingers pry the skin of a naval orange Releasing tiny explosions of spicy oil. You place peeled disks of gold in a bizarre pattern On my white body. Rearranging, you bend and bite The disks to release further their eager scent. I say “Stop, you’re tickling,” my eyes still on the page. Aromas of groves arise. Through green leaves Glow the lofty snows. Through red lips Your white teeth close on a translucent segment. Your face over my face eclipses The World’s Illusion. Pulp and juice pass into my mouth from your mouth. We laugh against each other’s lips. I hold my book Behind your head, still reading, still weeping a little. You say “Read on, I’m just an illusion,” rolling Over upon me soothingly, gently unmoving, Smiling greenly through long lashes. And soon I say “Don’t stop. Don’t disillusion me.” Snows melt. The mountain silvers into many a stream. The oranges are golden worlds in a dark dream.”

“Peeping through my keyhold I see within the range of only about 30 percent of the light that comes from the sun; the rest is infrared and some little ultraviolet, perfectly apparent to many animals, but invisible to me. A nightmare network of ganglia, charged and firing without my knowledge, cuts and splices what I see, editing it for my brain. Donald E. Carr points out that the sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brian: 'This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is.”