In this world of ours, a world of powerful centers and subjugated outposts, there is no wealth that must not be held in some suspicion. Eduardo Galeano More Quotes by Eduardo Galeano More Quotes From Eduardo Galeano I'm not asking you to describe the rain falling the night the archangel arrived; I'm demanding that you get me wet. Make up your mind, Mr. Writer, and for once in your life be the flower that smells rather than the chronicler of the aroma. There's not much pleasure in writing what you live. The challenge is to live what you write. Eduardo Galeano flower rain fall Because every single one of us has something to say to the others, something that deserves to be celebrated or forgiven by others Eduardo Galeano forgiven deserve In his life, a man can change wives, political parties or religions but he cannot change his favourite soccer team. Eduardo Galeano party team soccer If the grape is made of wine, then perhaps we are the words that tell who we are Eduardo Galeano who-we-are wine made I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia. Eduardo Galeano land latin past I was a terrible history student. They taught me history as if it were a visit to a wax museum or to the land of the dead. I was over twenty before I discovered that the past was neither quiet nor mute. Eduardo Galeano education museums past The tree of life knows that, whatever happens, the warm music spinning around it will never stop. However much death may come, however much blood may flow, the music will dance men and women as long as the air breaths them and the land plows and loves them. Eduardo Galeano spinning-around air men Writing is a marvelous adventure and very labor-intensive: those words run away and try to escape. They are very difficult to capture. Eduardo Galeano writing running adventure I would recognise myself in each of his translations and he would feel betrayed and annoyed whenever I didn't write something the way he would have. A part of me died with him, a part of him lives with me. Eduardo Galeano betrayed annoyed writing Schools teach ignorance. Eduardo Galeano ignorance knowledge school Our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others - the empires and their native overseers. In the colonial and neocolonial alchemy, gold changes into scrap metal and food into poison. Eduardo Galeano victory poison gold The world is becoming an immense military base, and that base is becoming a mental hospital the size of the world. Inside the nuthouse, which ones are crazy? Eduardo Galeano crazy military world ...because of forced globalization, there's a clear trend these days towards uniformity. This trend comes largely from the ever-greater concentration of power in the hands of large media groups. Eduardo Galeano groups media hands The poet, distracted by politics, asks of poetry that it make itself useful like metal or flour, that it get ready to stain its face with coal dust and fight body to body. Eduardo Galeano coal fighting dust We live in a world that treats the dead better than the living. We, the living are askers of questions and givers of answers, and we have other grave defects unpardonable by a system that believes death, like money, improves people. Eduardo Galeano answers believe people Human rights pale beside the rights of machines. In more and more cities, especially in the great metropolises of the South, people have been banned. Automobiles usurp human space, poison the air, and frequently murder the interlopers who invade their conquered territory -and no one lifts a finger to stop them. Is there a difference between violence that kills by car and that which kills by knife or bullet?" (p.231) Eduardo Galeano knives rights air The world is a heap of people, a sea of tiny flames. Eduardo Galeano flames sea people When a book is alive, really alive, you feel it. You put it to your ear here, and you feel it breathe, sometimes laugh, sometimes cry, just like a person, a little person. Eduardo Galeano ears laughing book I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Eduardo Galeano respect charity believe The human murder by poverty in Latin America is secret: every year, without making a sound, three Hiroshima bombs explode over communities that have become accustomed to suffering with clenched teeth. Eduardo Galeano latin america years
