Eduardo Galeano
23 quotes
Biography
"I remember that - you know, I didn't receive a formal education. I was educated in the Montevideo cafe, in the cafes of Montevideo. There, I received my first lessons in the art of telling stories, storytelling."
"I have never killed anybody, it is true, but it is because I lacked the courage or the time, not because I lacked the desire"
"The ball laughs, radiant, in the air. He brings her down, puts her to sleep, showers her with compliments, dances with her, and seeing such things never before seen his admirers pity their unborn grandchildren who will never see them."
"And one fine day the goddess of the wind kisses the foot of man, that mistreated, scorned foot, and from that kiss the soccer idol is born. He is born in a straw crib in a tin-roofed shack and he enters the world clinging to a ball."
"As the owners of heaven forbade chocolate to mortals, so the owners of earth forbade it to commoners."
"The results of civilization were surprising: our lives became more secure but less free, and we worked a lot harder.”."
"“He discovered or described hundreds of afflictions and cures, and by testing remedies he concluded “Laughter is the best medicine””"
"We live in a world where the funeral matters more than the dead, the wedding more than love and the physical rather than the intellect. We live in the container culture, which despises the content."
"The wages Haiti requires by law belong in the department of science fiction: actual wages on coffee plantations vary from $.07 to $.15 a day"
"The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing."
"I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people."
"somos todos mortales hasta el primer beso y el segundo vaso"
"The walls are the publishers of the poor."
"I am not particularly interested insaving time I prefer to enjoy it."
"Our effectiveness depends on our capacity to be audacious and astute, clear and appealing. I would hope that we can create a language more fearless and beautiful than that used by conformist writers to greet the twilight."
"History never really says goodbye. History says, 'See you later.'"
"The purpose of torture is not getting information. It's spreading fear."
"I'm attracted to soccer's capacity for beauty. When well played, the game is a dance with a ball."
"Today we must begin again. Step by small step, without any more protection than comes from our own bodies."
"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 flowers 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."
"The walls are the publishers of the poor."
"I wanted to be a soccer player, and I became the best of the best, the number one, better than Maradona, better than Pele, and even better than Messi - but only at night, nighttime, during my dreams. When I wake up, I realized that I have wooden legs and that I'm doomed to be a writer."
"The history of soccer is a sad voyage from beauty to duty. When the sport became an industry, the beauty that blossoms from the joy of play got torn out by its very roots."