"In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning."

George Orwell

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Ilustrações de Harry Clarke para os contos de Edgar A. Poe.

"Será que estou errado ao pensar que adorávamos viver ali? Nenhuma ilusão é mais corriqueira do que aquela que a nostalgia nos inspira na velhice, mas será que estou completamente enganado ao pensar que viver como crianças de boas famílias na Florença do Renascimento não chegaria nem aos pés de ser criado no raio de alcance aromático dos barris de picles de Tabachnik? Será que estou errado em pensar que mesmo naquele tempo, que era o nosso vívido presente, a plenitude da vida fazia vibrar nossas emoções a um grau extraordinário? Algum outro lugar, desde então, conseguiu inundar nossa mente com um mar de detalhes como aquele? O detalhe, a imensidão do detalhe, a força do detalhe, o peso do detalhe — a rica infinidade de detalhes que nos rodeava em nossa juventude, como os dois metros de terra que serão despejados em nossa cova quando estivermos mortos."

Philip Roth, A Pastoral Americana

"Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as often as he used them—transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots; whose words were so true and fresh and natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of spring, though they lay half smothered between two musty leaves in a library—aye, to bloom and bear fruit there, after their kind, annually, for the faithful reader, in sympathy with surrounding Nature."

Henry David Thoreau, Walking

"Eu dirigia pelo Sunset, no fim de uma tarde, parei num sinal, e num ponto de ônibus vi uma ruiva tingida com um rosto brutal e destroçado, empoado, pintado, que dizia “isto é o que a vida faz com a gente”. Eu podia imaginá-la bêbada, gritando com algum homem do outro lado da sala, e fiquei feliz por esse homem não ser eu."

As duas primeiras frases do conto É um mundo sujo, do Bukowski.

(...) Wallace, working alone, with very little in the way of encouragement or money, drew from his extensive experience of natural history, gathered while sending back specimens for collectors. He articulated concisely the elements as well as the sources familiar to Darwin: artificial selection, the struggle for survival, competition and extinction, the way species changed into different forms by an impersonal, describable process, by a logic that did not need the intervention of a deity. (...) In a covering letter Wallace politely asked Darwin to forward the essay to Lyell. Now, Darwin could have quietly destroyed Wallace's package and no one would have known a thing – it had taken months to arrive, and the mail between the Dutch East Indies could hardly have been reliable in the mid-19th century. But Darwin was an honourable man, and knew that he could never live with himself if he behaved scurrilously. And yet he was in anguish. In his own letter to Lyell, that accompanied Wallace's essay, which Darwin forwarded that same day, he lamented: "So all my originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed." He was surprised at the depth of his own feelings about priority, about being first. →

Artigo de Ian McEwan sobre originalidade e pioneirismo na arte e na ciência.

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Uma das ilustrações que Gustave Doré fez para o Dom Quixote.