Fluir

Theodore Wendel, Bridge at Ipswich (c. 1905, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

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«(…) Peter has larned the difficult animal skill of doing nothing. He’s learned to unshackle himself from the race of time and contemplate time itself. As far as he can tell, that’s what Odo spends most of his time doing: being in time, like one sits by a river, watching the water go by. It’s a lesson hard learned, just to sit there and be. At first he yearned for distractions. He would absent himself in memories (…). But he’s getting better at being in a state of illuminated, sitting-by-a-river repose (…)». 

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Yann Martel, The High Mountains of Portugal, Edinburgh Canongate Books, 2016, p. 300.

Lisboa vista por estrangeiros

© Travel Bliss Now

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«(…) He and Clara visited Lisbon once. He loved the tiled houses, the luxurient gardens, the hills, the streets of rundown European charm. The city fell like a late-summer evening, a mix of soft light, nostalgia, and slight boredom (…)».

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Yann Martel, The High Mountains of Portugal, Edinburgh Canongate Books, 2016, p. 239.

Tempo

Telemaco Signorini, September Morning in Settignano (c. 1891, Galleria dell'Arte Moderna, Palazzo Pitti, Florença)

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«(…) Already yesterday he noticed how the world is a timepiece. Birds announce dawn and dusk. Insects chime in further – the shrill cries of cicadas, like dentist’s drill, the frog-like warbling of crickets, among others. The church's bell also portions up the day helpfully. And finally the earth itself is a spinning clock, to each quadrant of hours a quality of light (…)».

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Yann Martel, The High Mountains of Portugal, Edinburgh Canongate Books, 2016, p. 285.

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Histórias

Com um grande agradecimento à Paula e ao Rui: gostei muito do livro.

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Tuizelo

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«(…) A story is a wedding in which we listeners are the groom watching the bride coming up the aisle. It is together, in an act of imaginary consummation, that the story is born. This act wholly involves us, as any marriage would, and just as no marriage is exactly the same as another, so each of us interprets a story differently, feels for it differently (…). Stories benefit the human mind (…)». 

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Yann Martel, The High Mountains of Portugal, Edinburgh, Canongate Books, 2016, p. 155.