• Pode até ser verdade, mas uma coisa é certa: O mundo ainda é o melhor lugar para se estar. Às vezes precisamos de ver as coisas com outro olhar - de criança, de poeta ou do cavaleiro da triste figura. Memórias de nós... Ah, eternidade!

Du Fu
SEEING Li Bai IN A DREAM II

This cloud, that has drifted all day through the sky,
May, like a wanderer, never come back....
Three nights now I have dreamed of you --
As tender, intimate and real as though
I were awake. And then, abruptly rising to go,
You told me the perils of adventure
By river and lake-the storms, the wrecks,
The fears that are borne on a little boat;
And, here in my doorway, you rubbed your white head
As if there were something puzzling you. ...
Our capital teems with officious people,
While you are alone and helpless and poor.
Who says that the heavenly net never fails?
It has brought you ill fortune, old as you are.
... A thousand years' fame, ten thousand years' fame
- What good, when you are dead and gone.

• Para escutar (com um Jack Daniels ou um manhattan sweet, straight up por perto): Samuel Barber, Adagio for strings, opus 11 (1936): http://www.epdlp.com/asf/barber1.wmv