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{EN} Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? – Caitlin Doughty
1. As a funeral director, I honestly have no idea what equipment a proper decapitation requires. 2. The beetles are incredible creatures, used in museums and forensic labs to delicately eat the dead flesh off a skeleton without destroying the bones themselves. Dermestids are happy to wade into a gruesome, sticky mass of decaying flesh and delicately clean around even the tiniest of bones. 3. Scientists now pretty much agree that getting useful DNA from animals in amber is not possible. DNA just disintegrates too quickly. Oxygen levels change, temperatures change, moisture levels change, all of which cause the puzzle pieces that make up your genetic code to fall apart.…
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{EN} Where’d You Go, Bernadette – Maria Semple
1. “I ignored her and threw my head back. Maybe that’s what religion is, hurling yourself off a cliff and trusting that something bigger will take care of you and carry you to the right place.” 2. “You need to be prepared for novel experiences because often they signal danger. If you live in a jungle full of fragrant flowers, you have to stop being so overwhelmed by the lovely smell because otherwise you couldn’t smell a predator. That’s why your brain is considered a discounting mechanism. It’s literally a matter of survival.” 3. “I had to go. If for no other reason than to be able to put my…
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{RO} Bătrânul care citea romane de dragoste – Luis Sepulveda
1. „Dobitocul ăla de străin a omorât puii şi mai mult ca sigur l-a rănit pe mascul. Ia uitaţi-vă la cer. Începe să plouă. Încercaţi să vă imaginaţi scena. Femela ieşise la vânat ca să-şi umple burta şi să-i poată alăpta în primele săptămâni de ploaie. Puişorii nu erau înţărcaţi şi masculul a rămas să-i îngrijească. Aşa se întâmplă cu fiarele sălbatice şi aşa i-a surprins străinul. În momentul ăla, femela bântuia pe-acolo înnebunită de durere. Şi tot atunci voia să-l prindă pe ucigaş. Nu cred că i-a fost prea greu să ia urma străinului. Nefericitul ducea cu sine şi mirosul laptelui cu care femela îşi hrănise puii. Mai omorâse…
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{EN} An Unnecessary Woman – Rabih Alameddine
1. “Yet only in Arabic class were we constantly told that we could not master this most difficult of languages, that no matter how much we studied and practiced, we could not possibly hope to write as well as al-Mutanabbi or, heaven forbid, the apex of the language, the Quran itself. Teachers indoctrinated students, just as they had been indoctrinated when younger. None of us can rise above being a failure as an Arab, our original sin.” 2. “I am my family’s appendix, its unnecessary appendage.” 3. “There are many reasons for not naming a character or someone you’re writing about. You might want to have the book be entirely…
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{RO} Adam și Eva – Liviu Rebreanu
1. “Fericirea adevărată e totdeauna o clipă. Mai multă n-ar putea îndura firea omului care, deseori, într-o viaţa de mulţi ani, nu are norocul sa întîlnească nici clipa aceasta, nici măcar să se apropie de ea.” 2. “Moartea e taina tainelor şi totodată cheia necunoscutului.” 3. “Cele doua principii se diferenţiază îndată în doua suflete, bărbat şi femeie, sortite de-acum vieţii materiale. Urmează căi diferite spre aceeaşi ţintă. Trebuie să treacă prin toate planurile existenţei pămînteşti, purtînd pretutindeni dorul lor de unire şi permanenta nostalgie după lumea spirituală; în clipa cînd sufletul gol se întrupează, începe viaţa omului. Pentru suflet e încercarea supremă, încătuşat complet în coaja materială, trebuie să-şi…
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{EN} Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain
1. “Of course, there’s every possibility this book could finish me in the business. There will be horror stories. Heavy drinking, drugs, screwing in the dry-goods area, unappetizing revelations about bad food-handling and unsavory industry-wide practices. Talking about why you probably shouldn’t order fish on a Monday, why those who favor well-done get the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel, and why seafood frittata is not a wise brunch selection won’t make me any more popular with potential future employers. My naked contempt for vegetarians, sauce-on-siders, the ‘lactose-intolerant’ and the cooking of the Ewok-like Emeril Lagasse is not going to get me my own show on the Food Network.”…
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{EN} Every Man Dies Alone – Hans Fallada
1. „Old proverb: “A good conscience is a soft pillow.” 2. „Quangel admitted to himself that he never loved the boy the way a father is supposed to love his son. From the time Ottochen was born, he had never seen anything in him but a nuisance and a distraction in his relationship with Anna. If he felt grief now, it was because he was thinking worriedly about Anna, how she would take the loss, what would now change between them. He had the first instance of that already: “You and your Führer.” 3. „But foreman Quangel liked equality and fair-dealing. To him a human being was a human being,…
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{EN} Open – Andre Agassi
1. “I’m a young man, relatively speaking. Thirty-six. But I wake as if ninety-six. After three decades of sprinting, stopping on a dime, jumping high and landing hard, my body no longer feels like my body, especially in the morning. Consequently my mind doesn’t feel like my mind. Upon opening my eyes I’m a stranger to myself, and while, again, this isn’t new, in the mornings it’s more pronounced.” 2. “I’m playing in the 2006 U.S. Open. My last U.S. Open. In fact my last tournament ever. I play tennis for a living, even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion, and always have.” 3.…
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{RO} Împărăteasa Orhidee – Anchee Min
1. „Mama a fost deprinsa cu conceptul ch’an de fericire, care presupune sa gasesti multumire în lucrurile marunte. Eu am fost învățată să apreciez aerul curat al diminetii, culoarea frunzelor care ruginesc toamna si atingerea plăcută a apei când îmi înmuiam mâinile în lighean.” 2. „Soarele nu straluceste numai pentru unii”, obisnuieste ea sa spuna. Ea crede ca toata lumea are o sansa.” 3. „Să renunți înseamnă să îți accepți soarta. Sa renunti înseamna sa creezi pacea. Sa renunti înseamna sa câstigi. Sa renunti înseamna sa ai totul.” 4. „Fann Sora cea Mare îmi zice ca Hsien Feng va alege sapte sotii oficiale si ca va fi liber sa „acorde…
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{EN} Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
1. “‘I’m ashamed of myself,’ said Sebastian gravely. ‘I’m not going to have you get mixed up with my family. They’re so madly charming. All my life they’ve been taking things away from me. If they once got hold of you with their charm, they’d make you their friend not mine, and I won’t let them.'” 2. “instead, fear worked like yeast in my thoughts, and the fermentation brought to the surface, in great gobs of scum, the images of disaster.” 4. “THE languor of Youth – how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional…
