Introduzione alla proiezione di "Una giornata particolare" al Cinema Troisi di Trastevere il 16/11/25:

#RecommendedReading: The Maniac Benjamín Labatut (Penguin) from the publisher: Johnny von Neumann was an enigma. As a young man, he stunned those around him with his monomaniacal pursuit of the unshakeable foundations of mathematics. But when his faith in this all-encompassing system crumbled,..

#RecommendedReading: Super-Frog Saves Tokyo Haruki Murakami (Harvill. division of Penguin Random House) from the publisher (1/3): A lavishly illustrated edition of Murakami’s classic short story.

Tyrants forego all respect for humanity in proportion as they are sunk beneath it. Taught to believe themselves of a different species, they really become so, lose their participation with their kind, and in mimicking the god dwindle into the brute. -William Hazlitt

Man's nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature. -Mahatma Gandhi

Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction. -Jonathan Swift

1/2 "The poor have often been subversive just because they don't always believe their own depiction as brutes and loafers and leeches, and new economy is making lots more poor..."

Thanks to words, we have been able to rise above the brutes; and thanks to words, we have often sunk to the level of the demons. -Aldous Huxley

¡Gracias José! Por tu arte, tu risa, por el amor que siempre intentaste compartir con todas las personas que se cruzaron en tu camino, por tu amistad incondicional. Un beso y un fuerte abrazo, hermano. Viggo

I marvel at the placidity of the Utopian who imagines that man is perfectible… Only the form of his sins varies. Progress is the hypocrisy which refines the vices. -Joris-Karl Huysmans

Look at the past—empire succeeding empire—and from that, extrapolate the future: the same thing. No escape from the rhythm of events. Which is why observing life for forty years is as good as a thousand. Would you really see anything new? -Marcus Aurelius

Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills? -Khalil Gibran

Congress is so beholden to the money that any solution in the general interest will be frustrated and subverted by the corporate interests who feel they will be damaged by progress, fair play and justice. -E. L. Doctorow

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting. -George Orwell

Out of the office today for Indigenous Peoples' Day. Back to filling orders tomorrow!

#RecommendedReading: Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy (Penguin, 2025)

1/2 "In the West there was panic when the migrants multiplied on the highways. Men of property were terrified for their property. Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry. Men who had never wanted anything very much saw the flare of want in the eyes of the migrants..."

There are many lessons to be learned from refugees and migrants that can contribute to the understanding needed to navigate the global tectonics to bring people together, not drive them into flight. -Helen Zia

1/2 "Acts of brutality committed by the ruling elite and systematic oppression of the weak stain every era of civilization. Ethnic wars and religious cleansing still exist in the twenty-first century..."

I know how men in exile feed on dreams. -Aeschylus

Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me. -Carlos Fuentes

The mullahs of the Islamic world and the mullahs of the Hindu world and the mullahs of the Christian world are all on the same side. And we are against them all. -Arundhati Roy

History is replete with ideologies of freedom, justice, liberation of the downtrodden and the exploited, that have been turned against the very people they had mobilised, or that have reproduced the same logic of exclusion and terror toward those whom they claimed to set free. -Tariq Ramadan