"there was only one solution. Every Indian knew it well. With no cow droppings at hand, our seagoing horde would have to burn its own, prepared by a tried and true peasant technique known for three thousand years. And so, the decks became weird workshops, where hands deft at molding this curious coal—children for the most part, down on their haunches—took each new batch of turds, kneaded and shaped them, pressing out the liquid, and rolling them out into little round brackets, like the kind we used to burn in our stoves not very long ago. The tropical sun did the rest, heating the sheet-metal decks, where the crowd had left great spaces, like drying racks, with thousands of the putrid mounds spread out to bake and harden into fuel."
Jean Paul Raspail was a French explorer, novelist and travel writer. He was a recipient of the prestigious French literary awards Grand Prix du Roman and Grand Prix de littérature by the Académie Française. The French government honoured him in 2003 by appointing him to the Legion of Honour, with the grade of Officer. Although the majority of his books are travelogues or novels about historical fi
"Will the word racism have any meaning for them at all? Even in my day the meaning has changed. What I always understood to be a simple expression of the races inability to get along together has become for my contemporaries—or most of them, I daresay—a war cry, a call to arms, a crime hgainst humanity and the dignity of man."
"Enough to demoralize those men and women who considered themselves good law-abiding citizens; in other words, almost the entire population."
"Magnificent antiracist pastry, filled with the cream of human kindness, spread with a sweet egalitarian frosting, sprinkled with bits of vanilla remorse, and on top, this graceful inscription, in flowery caramel arabesques: "Mea Culpa!" A cake to tug at the heart strings, if there ever was one. And everyone wanted to get the first bite..."
"nothing on earth now could stem the power of weakness triumphant."
"What else could you expect from a Brazilian? The Cardinals wanted a new-style pope. For the universal Church, they said. Well, they certainly got one!"
"Apocalypse or birth? A new breed of man, a new social order? Or the death of all bearable life as we know it? Dio couldnt give less of a damn. He admits it. "... human ideals, above governments, and economic systems, and religions, and races ..." Yes, thats what he said. But what does it really mean? Not a blessed thing, really. Theres nothing at all above those things. And absolute void, like the splitting of the atom, or a great empty nothingness, let loose all at once. A show too good to miss."