“You have to distinguish between two things – the Swedish economy and the Swedish stock market. The Swedish economy is the sum of all the goods and services that are produced in this country every day. There are telephones from Ericsson, cars from Volvo, chickens from Scan, and shipments from Kiruna to Skövde. That’s the Swedish economy, and it’s just as strong or weak today as it was a week ago.” He paused for effect and took a sip of water. “The Stock Exchange is something very different. There is no economy and no production of goods and services. There are only fantasies in which people from one hour to the next decide that this or that company is worth so many billions, more or less. It doesn’t have a thing to do with reality or with the Swedish economy.”
― The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
― The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
“Des heard the dogs. They weren't barking, he realized, not exactly. They were swearing. And the rooftop rottweilers, faintly and almost plaintively, at this distance, were swearing back:
'FUCKOFF!' yelled Joe, or Jeff. It was almost a monosyllable.
'FUCKOFF!' 'FUCK! FUCK!' 'FUCKOFF!' 'FUCKOFF!' yelled Jeff, or Joe. 'FUCKOFF!' 'FUCK! FUCK!' 'FUCKOFF!”
― Lionel Asbo: State of England
'FUCKOFF!' yelled Joe, or Jeff. It was almost a monosyllable.
'FUCKOFF!' 'FUCK! FUCK!' 'FUCKOFF!' 'FUCKOFF!' yelled Jeff, or Joe. 'FUCKOFF!' 'FUCK! FUCK!' 'FUCKOFF!”
― Lionel Asbo: State of England
“This is a bit like being accused of shagging the sister ah don’t have.”
― Ecstasy
― Ecstasy
“Mis colegas, incluso yo mismo, susurrando con timidez desde nuestros divanes, estábamos de acuerdo en que mi problema era del todo normal: odiaba al mundo y a mí mismo porque había fallado al tratar de afrontar y aceptar mis propias limitaciones y las de la vida. En literatura, este rechazo se llama romanticismo; en psicología, neurosis. La consecuencia de todo esto es que el único e inevitable camino parece ser una vida limitada y aburrida. Empezaba a aceptarlo, después de varios meses de recrearme en la depresión (me había procurado furtivamente un revólver del calibre 38 y nueve balas), cuando llegué a las costas del zen.”
― The Dice Man
― The Dice Man
“Or else the cloud hovered, having barely left the lips, dense and slow, and suggested another vision: the exhalations that hang over the roofs of the metropolises, the opaque smoke that is not scattered, the hood of miasmata that weighs over the bituminous streets. Not the labile mists of memory nor the dry transparence, but the charring of burned lives that forms a scab on the city, the sponge swollen with vital matter that no longer flows, the jam of past, present, future that blocks existences calcified in the illusion of movement: this is what you would find at the end of your journey.”
― Invisible Cities
― Invisible Cities
Bryce’s 2023 Year in Books
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