Sedulia's Quotations

Chris Kraul reports from Venezuela: Corpse takes ride on motorcycle

On a recent day, the cemetery was the scene of a macabre ritual that has become a regular occurrence whenever a young gang member is buried, Gonzalez said. It provided another example of the lawlessness here.

During the funeral procession for a 25-year-old gunshot victim, friends suddenly halted the cortege and removed the corpse from the coffin to give it one last joy ride around the cemetery on the back of a buddy's motorcycle.

   --From an article by Chris Kraul in the Los Angeles Times (6 September 2007), on graverobbing (the bones are sold for voodoo rituals), among other problems at a city cemetery in Caracas, Venezuela.

Quetzalcoatl: Learn to think for a long time how to change the world

Learn to think for a long time how to change the world.

       --Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god. Quoted by Mary Pipher (1947-), Writing to Change the World  (2006)

Alfonso Cuarón on films that begin when the lights come on

A friend of mine told me once that he stopped believing in the films that finish when the lights come on, and that he only cared for the films that begin when the lights come on.

  --Alfonso Cuarón, director of the film Children of Men, about the last pregnant woman on earth

Octavio Paz on American vs Mexican realism

I had a heard a good deal of talk about American realism and also of their ingenuousness, qualities that would seem to be mutually exclusive. To us a realist is always a pessimist.

  --Octavio Paz (1914-1998) in The Labyrinth of Solitude