To him the stars seemed like so many musical notes affixed to the sky, just waiting for somebody to unfasten them. Someday the sky would be emptied, but by then the earth would be a constellation of musical scores
Interpretation
The quote portrays the stars as potential musical notes, suggesting a deep connection between the universe and creativity.
Machado De Assis uses the metaphor of stars as musical notes to convey the idea that the universe is full of untapped creativity waiting to be expressed. He suggests that while the sky may eventually be emptied of stars, the earth will remain vibrant with the music of life created from those inspirations, highlighting the relationship between the cosmos and artistic expression.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech about the importance of artistic expression.
Let Pascal say that man is a thinking reed. He is wrong; man is a thinking erratum. Each period in life is a new edition that corrects the preceding one and that in turn will be corrected by the next, until publication of the definitive edition, which the publisher donates to the worms.
In ordinary life, the action of a third party does not free the contractor from an obligation; but the advantage of making a contract with heaven is that intentions are valid currency.
There is nothing in the world so monstrously vast as our indifference.
Por que bonita, se coxa? Por que coxa, se bonita?
I would never want to live anywhere but Baltimore. You can look far and wide, but you'll never discover a stranger city with such extreme style. It's as if every eccentric in the South decided to move north, ran out of gas in Baltimore, and decided to stay.
I've long believed that good food, good eating, is all about risk. Whether we're talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters or working for organized crime 'associates,' food, for me, has always been an adventure
I compose music for films, and by the grace of God, I've got a few awards. That's it.
People ask me why my figures have to be so black. There are a lot of reasons. First, the blackness is a rhetorical device. When we talk about ourselves as a people and as a culture, we talk about black history, black culture, black music. That's the rhetorical position we occupy.
As long as the world continues to be strange and interesting, I still want to take pictures of it.
I'm a storyteller: the crux of the matter is to reach beauty, poetry; it doesn't matter if that is comedy or tragedy. They're the same if you reach the beauty.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.