Alex Castro

“The simple truth is that most people aren’t out to get you. We are so bad at spotting deception because it’s better for us to be more trusting. Trust, and not adeptness at spotting deception, is the more evolutionarily beneficial path.”
― Maria Konnikova, The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It . . . Every Time

“The Unknown sometimes holds surprises for the spirit of man. A sudden rent in the veil of darkness will momentarily reveal the invisible and then close up again. Such visions sometimes have a transfiguring effect, turning a camel driver into a Mohammed, a goat girl into a Joan of Arc. Solitude brings out a certain amount of sublime exaltation.”
― Victor Hugo, The Toilers of the Sea

“It was a lodging for the kind of people who have no permanent lodging. In all towns, and particularly in seaports, there is always to be found, below the general population, a residue. Lawless characters—so lawless that even the law sometimes cannot get its hands on them—pickers and stealers, tricksters living by their wits, chemists of villainy continually brewing up life in their crucibles; rags of every kind and every way of wearing them; withered fruits of roguery, bankrupt existences, consciences that have declared themselves insolvent; the incompetents of breaking and entering (for the big men of burglary are above all this); journeymen and journeywomen of evil, rascals both male and female; scruples in tatters and out at elbow; scoundrels who have sunk into poverty, evildoers who have had little reward from their work, losers in the social duel, devourers who now go hungry, the low earners of crime, beggars and villains: such are the people who form this residue. Human intelligence is to be found here, but it is bestial. This is the rubbish heap of souls, piled up in a corner and swept from time to time by the broom that is called a police raid. La Jacressarde was a corner of this kind in Saint-Malo.”
― Victor Hugo, The Toilers of the Sea

“Dissimulation is an act of violence against yourself. A man hates those to whom he lies.”
― Victor Hugo, The Toilers of the Sea