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Entro no metro. Encosto-me à porta do lado contrário, um solavanco, e aí vamos nós: uns parecem perdidos dentro das suas cabeças, olhos postos num vazio; outros falam, quase todos ao telemóvel; há quem mande mensagens, muitos ouvem música...

Reparo num jovem casal, de pé, lado a lado, no fundo da carruagem. Sorriem, as mãos dadas. Não são fones que levam nos ouvidos. São estetoscópios... Os fios cruzam-se entre eles, à altura do pescoço, e introduzem-se através das golas da camisolas um do outro. O dele pela dela. E a dela pelo dele. Assim vão, enquanto os corações baterem...

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"Nothing optional - from homosexuality to adultery - is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishments) have a repressed desire to participate. As Shakespeare put it in King Lear, the policeman who lashes the whore has a hot need to use her for the very offense for which he plies the lash."

(Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great)

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"A melancholy lesson of advancing years is the realisation that you can't make old friends."

(Christopher Hitchens, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere)

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"Faith is the surrender of the mind, it's the surrender of reason [...]. It's our need to believe and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something." (Christopher Hitchens)

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"Religion comes from the period of human prehistory, where nobody - not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms - had the smallest idea of what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today, the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion."

(Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great)

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"In a culture that is becoming ever more story-stupid, in which a representative of the Coca-Cola company can, with a straight face, pronounce, as he donates a collection of archival Coca-Cola commercials to the Library of Congress, that 'Coca-Cola has become an integral part of people's lives by helping to tell these stories,' it is perhaps not surprising that people have trouble teaching and receiving a novel as complex and flawed as Huck Finn, but it is even more urgent that we learn to look passionately and technically at stories, if only to protect ourselves from the false and manipulative ones being circulated among us."

(George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone)

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"Deixa-me olhar um pouco para o mar. Deixa-me estar um pouco sem tempo, que é a verdade do azul do mar. Deixa-me perder a idade que perdi. Há espaço bastante a todo o horizonte marinho para o bocado de infinito que ainda trago comigo. Há ainda veraneantes na praia para eu daqui tomar banho com eles. Vou respirar fundo, que é o que sempre apetece diante do mar para inspirarmos o universo com a inspiração. Vou ficar a olhar o brilho das águas nos jogos do meu devaneio."

(Vergílio Ferreira, Em Nome da Terra)

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"Há uma mulher muito viva, chama-se Albertina, talvez conheças, foi corista e mesmo actriz, ela faz questão em repetir. Pergunto-lhe como veio até aqui, ela conta. E então o merceeiro fez-se ao piso - e eu precisava da mercearia, o doutor calcula - e eu calculava. Mas era muito mau na cama. Fazia os seus preparativos, é claro, mas depois quando metia, cuspia logo, e eu ficava em brasa, deve calcular - e eu calculava. Mas tinha um irmão, oh, isso era um homem como nunca há-de haver outro. Eram beijos devagar, era muito lento, sempre, beijos devagar desde as pernas e depois, mesmo onde se não esperava, mesmo aí e com demora, sim senhor, e depois por ali acima e eu estava já a arder e dizia-lhe mete, mete, pelas cinco chagas de Cristo mete já, e ele metia mas sempre devagar. Às vezes tirava ainda ou brincava à entrada e eu já não podia mais e ele sempre metendo por fim até ao fundo e eu dizia-lhe mexe-te, pelo amor de Deus, mexe-te de uma vez e ele enfim começava mas eu já não aguentava mais e rebentava toda por dentro e ele então acelerava e aí eu estoirava duas três dez vezes e eu só lhe dizia acaba tu também, mas ele devagar não acabava e às tantas eu não podia mais e empurrava-o com toda a força mas ele agarrava-se como uma lapa, queria também a sua parte, e muito tempo depois, finalmente, ele dava também o seu estoiro e aí então eu atirava com ele para os infernos com ódio, tinha-lhe raiva de tanto gozo e ele muito calmo vestia-se e quando já se ia embora eu tinha pena ou não sei o que era, e se ele não vinha ter comigo até dois ou três dias, ia eu doida à procura dele.
- E o irmão?
- Não achava mal, ficava tudo em família. E depois eu tinha mais paciência com ele [...]

(Vergílio Ferreira, Em Nome da Terra)

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"E do lado oposto há um pequeno jardim sem canteiros, digamos um pátio com bancos para a invalidez. Nunca lá vi ninguém, porque a invalidez, para lá chegar, tem de ter ainda um pouco de perna disponível, e a tê-la, prefere levá-la até lá fora e dar-lhe ar."

(Vergílio Ferreira, Em Nome da Terra)

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"[...] que estupidez querer explicar o ser. Ou o azul. Ou uma cor que não existe e é a tua. Ou a harmonia do repouso da minha vida inteira aí."

(Vergílio Ferreira, Em Nome da Terra)

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"Hannah Arendt used to speak of ‘the lost treasure of the revolution’: a protean phenomenon that eluded the capture of those who sought it the most. Like Hegel’s ‘cunning of history’ and Marx’s ‘old mole’ that surfaced in unpredictable and ironic places, this mercurial element did quicken my own short life in the magic, tragic years that are denoted as 1968, 1989, and 2001. In the course of all of them, even if not without convolutions and contradictions, it became evident that the only historical revolution with any verve left in it, or any example to offer others, was the American one. (Marx and Engels, who wrote so warmly about the United States and who were Lincoln’s strongest supporters in Europe, and who so much disliked the bloodiness and backwardness of Russia, might not have been either surprised or disconcerted to notice this outcome).

To announce that one has painfully learned to think for oneself might seem an unexciting conclusion and anyway, I have only my own word for it that I have in fact taught myself to do so. The ways in which the conclusion is arrived at may be interesting, though, just as it is always how people think that counts for much more than what they think. I suspect that the hardest thing for the idealist to surrender is the teleological, or the sense that there is some feasible, lovelier future that can be brought nearer by exertions in the present, and for which “sacrifices” are justified. With some part of myself, I still ‘feel,’ but no longer really think, that humanity would be poorer without this fantastically potent illusion. ‘A map of the world that did not show utopia,’ said Oscar Wilde, ‘would not be worth consulting.’ I used to adore that phrase, but now reflect more upon the shipwrecks and prison islands to which the quest has led.

But I hope and believe that my advancing age has not quite shamed my youth. I have actually seen more prisons broken open, more people and territory ‘liberated,’ and more taboos broken and censors flouted, since I let go of the idea, or at any rate the plan, of a radiant future. Those ‘simple’ ordinary propositions, of the open society, especially when contrasted with the lethal simplifications of that society’s sworn enemies, were all I required. This wasn’t a dreary shuffle to the Right, either. It used to be that the Right made tactical excuses for friendly dictatorships, whereas now most conservatives are frantic to avoid even the appearance of doing so, and at least some on the Left can take at least some of the credit for at least some of that. It is not so much that there are ironies of history, it is that history itself is ironic. It is not that there are no certainties, it is that it is an absolute certainty that there are no certainties. It is not only true that the test of knowledge is an acute and cultivated awareness of how little one knows (as Socrates knew so well), it is true that the unbounded areas and fields of one’s ignorance are now expanding in such a way, and at such a velocity, as to make the contemplation of them almost fantastically beautiful. One reason, then, that I would not relive my life is that one cannot be born knowing such things, but must find them out, even when they seem bloody obvious, for oneself. If I had set out to put this on paper so as to spare you some or even any of the effort, I would be doing you an injustice."

(Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22)

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"For a lot of people, their first love is what they'll always remember. For me it's always been the first hate, and I think that hatred, though it provides often rather junky energy, is a terrific way of getting you out of bed in the morning and keeping you going. If you don't let it get out of hand, it can be canalized into writing. In this country where people love to be nonjudgmental when they can be, which translates as, on the whole, lenient, there are an awful lot of bubble reputations floating around that one wouldn't be doing one's job if one didn't itch to prick." (Christopher Hitchens)

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"My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass." (Christopher Hitchens)

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"The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more."

(Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist)