South America Quotes

“She criticized, “There are no excuses for why it could not be better. The devil’s in the details,” Viola tried to teach him. That made him mad and she heard him mutter, “Now’s I know why they call you Mrs. Rough-ner!” He went out and used hand scissors for the edges making the yard crisp and pleasant for all to see. Then, Viola just had to smile to herself because she guessed she had pushed him to his limit! But at last, the task was perfect and then, right after that, he left their home again.”
― Sheridan Brown, The Viola Factor

“There is a kind of alchemy in the transformation of base chocolate into this wise fool's-gold, a layman's magic that even my mother might have relished. As I work, I clear my mind, breathing deeply. The windows are open, and the through-draft would be cold if it were not for the heat of the stoves, the copper pans, the rising vapor from the melting couverture. The mingled scents of chocolate, vanilla, heated copper, and cinnamon are intoxicating, powerfully suggestive; the raw and earthy tang of the Americas, the hot and resinous perfume of the rain forest. This is how I travel now, as the Aztecs did in their sacred rituals: Mexico, Venezuela, Columbia. The court of Montezuma. Cortez and Columbus. The Food of the Gods, bubbling and frothing in ceremonial goblets. The bitter elixir of life.”
― Joanne Harris, Chocolat

“Madre de piedra, espuma de los cóndores.

Alto arrecife de la aurora humana.

Pala perdida en la primera arena.”
― Pablo Neruda, The Heights of Macchu Picchu

“The children of the Indians are saved, to be sold or given away as servants, or rather slaves, for as long a time as the owners can deceive them; but I believe in this respect there is little to complain of.”
― Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle

“I don’t care what Einstein said about God not playing dice; If he exists, he’s addicted to craps.”
― Henry Mosquera, Sleeper's Run

“And at this very moment, like a miracle, the rail-bus appeared. We waved our arms frantically, hardly daring to hope that it would stop. It did stop. We scrambled thankfully on board.
That is the irony of travel. You spend your boyhood dreaming of a magic, impossibly distant day when you will cross the Equator, when your eyes will behold Quito. And then, in the slow prosaic process of life, that day undramatically dawns—and finds you sleepy, hungry and dull. The Equator is just another valley; you aren’t sure which and you don’t much care. Quito is just another railroad station, with fuss about baggage and taxis and tips. And the only comforting reality, amidst all this picturesque noisy strangeness, is to find a clean pension run by Czech refugees and sit down in a cozy Central European parlor to a lunch of well-cooked Wiener Schnitzel.”
― Christopher Isherwood, The Condor And The Cows: A South American Travel Diary

“Who can define reality? Isn't everything subjective? If you & I witness the same event, we will recall it and recount it differently. ... Memory is conditioned by emotion, we remember better, and more fully, things that move us, such as the joy of a birth, the pleasure of a night of love, the pain of a loved one's death, the trauma of a wound. When we call up the past, we choose intense moments--good or bad--and omit the enormous gray area of daily life.”
― Isabel Allende, My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile

“Intrepid Dudettes of the Inca Empire is my humble contribution to "herstory", the history of women, the history of our foremothers, the women who made history but were overlooked by history.”
― Helen Pugh

“Embora a realidade política seja eternamente destrutiva, dei e dou graças a Deus por ter como solo a América do Sul.”
― Fernanda Montenegro, Prólogo, ato, epílogo: Memórias

“The most heartening response came not from the book pages in the press but from real incidents in the streets. The girl who was quietly reading Open Veins to her companion in a bus in Bogotá, and finally stood up and read it aloud to all the passengers. The woman who fled from Santiago in the days of the Chilean bloodbath with this book wrapped inside her baby's diapers. The student who went from one bookstore to another for a week in Buenos Aires's Calle Corrientes, reading bits of it in each store because he hadn't the money to buy it.
And the most favorable reviews came not from any prestigious critic but from the military dictatorships that praised the book by banning it. For example, Open Veins is unobtainable either in my country, Uruguay, or in Chile; in Argentina the authorities denounced it on TV and in the press as a corrupter of youth, As Blas de Otero remarked, "They don't let people see what I write because I write what I see.”
― eduardo galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

“Husbands who have been deceived and lied to and made to look fools have for centuries fled to South America, never to return. It’s a tradition that goes back a long way.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Concrete

“The Andes, guardians of this untamed land, seem to inhale deeply, exhaling a breath that whispers of secrets hidden within their mighty peaks. And I, a mere witness to this grand theater of nature, stand on the precipice, my soul intoxicated by the sheer majesty of the Andean sunset.”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Days

“The activities of La Condamine, Humboldt, Wallace, Bates, and other such explorers touched on only the tiniest fraction of the vastness of a world so expansive as to be impervious to harm. But today, the Amazon River Basin, occupying more than 2.7 million square miles is at our fingertips and is considered one of the most ecologically threatened regions of the world.”
― Kurt Johnson, Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius

“In un certo senso la destra ha ragione quando s'identifica con la tranquillità e con l'ordine: è l'ordine della quotidiana umiliazione della maggioranza, ma è pur sempre un ordine; è la tranquillità dell'ingiustizia che continua a essere ingiusta e della fame affamata.”
― Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

“Like the legends of Kon-Tiki Viracocha [...], the South American civilizing hero, white-skinned and bearded like Quetzalcoatl and the Apkallu sages [...], who was said to have come to the Andes during a terrifying period, thousands of years in the past, "when the earth had been inundated by a great flood and plunged into darkness by the disappearance of the sun." (Exactly like Quetzalcoatl in Mexico, and the Apkallu sages in Mesopotamia, Viracocha's civilizing mission in the Andes had been to bring laws and a moral code to the survivors of the disaster, and to teach them the skills of agriculture, architecture and engineering.”
― Graham Hancock, Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization

“We work and slave to get away, only to find that things got in the way. Let's change the script.”
― Dirk Weisiger

“Get out and Live Your Movie!”
― Dirk Weisiger, Leave Tomorrow: My Ride to the Bottom of the World

“He wanted to rest in that place, hidden in the middle of yellow wheat, at dusk, looking at the sky. He felt exhausted, and yet, surprising himself, remembered he had often run the marathon at school and won, the hundred-metre dash too, and, as if dreaming, he broke into a run, and believed he ran faster than a hare, turned to look, they were close, deranged faces, arms stretched out, they could touch him, but he would get home and carry on to Bogotá and then Singapore, he thought, and thought on, managing to have time to think – they’ll say Puelles got away.
The shot rang out and a flock of pigeons flew up over the wheat fields.”
― Evelio Rosero, Feast of the Innocents

“Lima exudes a distinct ambiance, akin to a heavy rain cloud casting darkness over everything. It is a challenging place, where life offers no respite and its inhabitants remain forever vigilant against adversity.”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Days

“The Amazon, in all its enigmatic grandeur, embodies the paradoxes of existence. It is a place of untamed beauty and unfathomable complexity, where the fragility and resilience of life intertwine.
It is a testament to the boundless wonders of the natural world, a reminder of our interconnectedness with all living beings. Here in the heart of the Amazon, secrets whisper through the rustling leaves, beckoning the curious and the intrepid.”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Days

“Ah, Choquequirao, another lost city of the Incas, as massive and impressive as Machu Picchu but with far fewer tourists. Here somewhere in the heart of the Andean wilderness, where the jagged peaks pierce the heavens and the spirits of the ancients linger, lies Choquequirao, an enigma waiting to be unraveled by us.”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Days

“As the sun baths the ruins in its golden glow, I gaze upon the terraces that cascade down the mountainside, seemingly suspended between heaven and earth. The stones are whispering tales of a civilisation long gone, but their voices carry on the breeze, reaching my ears with a poignant urgency. In this forgotten citadel, the ghosts of the Inca mingle with the echoes of my own restless soul.”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Days

“Here, I stand at the threshold of the world, my heart entwined with the pulse of nature, my spirit poised to soar beyond the limits of my mortal form.”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Days

“In Choquequirao, I found not just the remnants of an ancient civilisation, but a portal to the boundless realms of the human experience. It whispered of fleeting moments and eternal truths, reminding me that we are but temporary custodians of this world, etching our stories into the fabric of time.”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Days

“Machu Picchu, oh the name alone evokes a sense of mystique, a whispered secret passed down through the ages. Here in the heart of the Andes, where the mountains kiss the heavens and the clouds weave their ethereal tapestry, lies this hidden sanctuary, a testament to the ingenuity of a forgotten civilisation.”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Days

“Here in the heart of the Amazon, secrets whisper through the rustling leaves, beckoning the curious and the intrepid. It is a realm that defies human comprehension, inviting us to surrender to its mysteries and embrace the profound humbling awe that accompanies our fleeting encounter with this awe-inspiring wilderness.”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Days

“If you ask my mother where she’s from, she’s 100 percent going to say she’s from the Kingdom of God, because she does not like to say that she’s from Ecuador, Ecuador being one of the few South American countries that has not especially outdone itself on the international stage—magical realism basically skipped over it, as did the military dictatorship craze of the 1970s and 1980s, plus there are no world-famous Ecuadorians to speak of other than the fool who housed Julian Assange at the embassy in London (the president) and Christina Aguilera’s father, who was a domestic abuser. If you ask my father where he is from, he will definitely say Ecuador because he is sentimental about the country for reasons he’s working out in therapy. But if you push them, I mean really push them, they’re both going to say they’re from New York. If you ask them if they feel American because you’re a little narc who wants to prove your blood runs red, white, and blue, they’re going to say No, we feel like New Yorkers. We really do, too.”
― Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, The Undocumented Americans

“Ah, the Pacific, the silent witness to Lima's relentless evolution since its founding, what are your secrets, will you ever tell us?”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Nights

“I was awestruck by Rio – the way the ocean, city and emerald mountains merged into each other and held hands.”
― Dana Da Silva, The Shift: A Memoir

“[S]lowly, unwillingly, I began to see what God had been trying to teach me. He hadn't called me, really, to be a missionary... He had called me to Himself, to be like His Son, Jesus Christ. And He wanted me to follow Him to South America. Now." -”
― Bruce Olson, Bruchko