I am Bernardo.

I write about whatever excites me, which is mostly ruminations of stuff I’ve read in books, seen in films or simply experienced.

I’m a software engineer, a film enthusiast and spare-time music maker. I also like books.

If you find what’s written here exciting and want to talk about it, email me.

Favorite quotes:

“We are what we pretend to be.”

—Kurt Vonnegut

“Another person’s head is a wretched place to be the home of one’s true happiness.”

—Arthur Schopenhauer

“Music is spiritual. The music business is not.”

—Van Morrison

“I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.”

—Emo Phillips

“Writing is human, editing is divine.”

—Stephen King

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

—Carl Sagan

“The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.”

—Marcus Aurelius

“It is possible to enjoy something and at the same time be indifferent to it.”

—William B. Irvine

“People tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity.”

—Victor E. Frankl

“Fortune inflicts harm with the moral blindness of a hurricane.”

“Enduring loneliness is invariably better than suffering the compromises of false community.”

—Alain de Botton

“I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.”

–Daniel Kahneman

“The greatest amount of scientific eminence is trumped by the smallest amount of scientific evidence.”

“Expecting to understand the brain by studying the mind is like expecting to understand a computer by studying its display.”

–Paul Lutus

“Taking drugs while depressed is like putting a coat when it rains.”

“We are meat bags of salt water, lipids, proteins and chemicals, that emerged from endoplasmic sewage, and are now capable of having an experience.”

–Unknown

“Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. Why Bilbo Baggins? I don’t know. Perhaps because I am afraid, and he gives me courage.”

–Gandalf, a character by J.R.R. Tokien

“When you throw a stone into the water, it hurries by the swiftest possible path to the bottom. It is like this when Siddhartha has a goal, a resolve. He does nothing — he waits, he thinks, he fasts — but he passes through the things of this world like a stone through water, without doing anything, without moving; he is drawn and lets himself fall […]. It is what fools call magic and think is performed by demons. Nothing is performed by demons; there are no demons. Anyone can perform magic. Anyone can reach their goals if they can think, if they can wait, if they can fast.”

—Siddhartha, a character by Hermann Hesse