Foundation, Isaac Asimov.

“Then what of the future?

Mallow lifted his gloomy face, and exclaimed fiercely, “What business of mine is the future? No doubt Seldon has foreseen it and prepared against it. There will be other crisis in the time to come when money power has become as dead a force as religion is now.  Let my successors solve those new problems, as I have solved the one of today.”

On books and politics

Do books speak for you more profoundly than political speaches? Do they carry a message which gives us a better understanding of what a country is? I believe we learn more about the world reading books than reading the papers. Not that I do not read them…it is just that sometimes the world seems something I have already read in books. No news in the papers, but the books…oh, the books!  I can say I have learned a great deal on politics and humanity with the Russians (call it Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy). If I think of the ways I got to know what Brazil really is, that would definitely lead me to Machado de Assis and his extraordinary way of describing this society, or Darcy Ribeiro with his amazing view on detail and history.

Of course it all depends on who you are reading.  As you grow more mature, reading turns out to be your “self” that follows you wherever you go, that designs your thinking in an era of chaos and beauty altogether.  At least this is how I chose to lead my life….with intelligent people to keep me company until I desintegrate in the solar system.

But, why am I writing about this?  Oh yes! It was a letter from the Paris Review, the ones that make you remember why you love the art of writing so much.  Wish someday I could learn to write as I read.

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/12/02/letter-from-our-paris-editor/