Open in app
Sign inGet started
Go to the profile of Paulo Henrique Lemos
Paulo Henrique Lemos in Up to a Point

On popular culture and books

But popular culture is where we go to talk to and agree with one another; to simplify ourselves; to find our herd. It’s like going to the Automat to buy an emotion. The thrills are cheap and the payoffs predictable and, after a while, the repetition is a bummer. Whereas books…
Read more…
Go to the profile of Paulo Henrique Lemos
Paulo Henrique Lemos in Up to a Point

On friendship and sacrifice

The debate about friendship is really a variant of the debate about what sacrifices might be worth making for Communism. In both cases, you have to weigh abstract values against what is personal, individual and immediate. You have to decide what matters most: the person in front…
Read more…
Go to the profile of Paulo Henrique Lemos
Paulo Henrique Lemos in Up to a Point

On being in a foreign country

Being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends, and where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood.
Read more…
Go to the profile of Paulo Henrique Lemos
Paulo Henrique Lemos in Up to a Point

On movies versus life

The problem, he said, is that people insist on getting everything straight. On having movies make sense, and on being provided with a key for unlocking complex movies. “It’s the weirdest thing. We’re willing to accept anything, absolutely anything, in real life. But we demand order from…
Read more…
Go to the profile of Paulo Henrique Lemos
Paulo Henrique Lemos in Up to a Point

On middle-class anxieties

As sociologist George Homans observed, “Middle-status conservatism reflects the anxiety experienced by one who aspires to a social station but fears disenfranchisement.” The fall from low to lower hardly hurts; the fall from middle to low is devastating.

— Adam Grant, in “Originals”.

Go to the profile of Paulo Henrique Lemos
Paulo Henrique Lemos in Up to a Point

On bias and life

How many good years should you wait before concluding that an investment adviser is unusually skilled? How many successful acquisitions should be needed for a board of directors to believe that the CEO has extraordinary flair for such deals? The simple answer to these questions is that if you…
Read more…
Go to the profile of Paulo Henrique Lemos
Paulo Henrique Lemos in Up to a Point

On soccer and life

Soccer was not meant to be enjoyed. It was meant to be experienced. The World Cup is a festival of fate: man accepting his hard circumstances, the near certainty of his failure. There is, after all, something familiar about a contest in which nobody wins and nobody pots a goal. Nil-nil is the…
Read more…
Go to the profile of Paulo Henrique Lemos
Paulo Henrique Lemos in Up to a Point

On hopes and desires

The last few years have taught me to suspend my desire for a conclusion, to assume that nothing is static and that renegotiation will be perpetual, to hope primarily that little truths will keep emerging in time.

— Jia Tolentino, in "Trick Mirror".

Go to the profile of Paulo Henrique Lemos
Paulo Henrique Lemos in Up to a Point

On dreams and creativity

It isn’t that I’m particularly inventive, only that I am able to awaken certain feelings and thoughts inside of you. I can see, on the horizon, unpronounced and unproclaimed images. I can sense the hypnotic qualities of things that to everyone else look unobtrusive, then excavate and…
Read more…
Go to the profile of Paulo Henrique Lemos
Paulo Henrique Lemos in Up to a Point

On raising aspirations

At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. It costs you relatively little to do this, but the…
Read more…
About
Up to a Point
Up to a Point
An appreciation of quotes in the English language.
More information
Followers
4
Elsewhere