76 quotes found
“Younger than Morini and Pelletier, Espinoza studied Spanish literature, not German literature, at least for the first two years of his university career, among other sad reasons because he dreamed ...”
“You can woo a girl with a poem, but you can't hold onto her with a poem. Not even with a poetry movement.”
“A person could be immensely happy reading only him or the writers he loved. But that would be too easy.”
“I didn't hit her, man, what happened was that Maria was obsessed with the Marquis de Sade and wanted to try the spanking thing," said Luscious Skin. "That's very Maria," said Pancho. "She takes her...”
“His words saddened them greatly, though they couldn't say why.”
“At the bar on the Favoritenstrasse, Julius the policeman talked to us about dignity, evolution, the great Darwin and the great Nietzsche. I translated so that my good friend Ulises could understand...”
“When you know something, you know it, and when you don't, you'd better learn. And in the meantime, you should keep quiet, or at least speak only when what you say will advance the learning process.”
“Anyway, these ideas or feelings or ramblings had their satisfactions. They turned the pain of others into memories of one’s own. They turned pain, which is natural, enduring, and eternally triumpha...”
“I don't know what I'm doing in Santa Teresa," Amalfitano said to himself after he'd been living in the city for a week."Don't you? Don't you really?" he asked himself."Really I don't," he said to h...”
“Life is mysterious as well as vulgar.”
“All names disappear. Children should be taught that in elementary school. But we're afraid to teach them.”
“If it was true that all effort led to a vast abyss, she had two recommendations to begin with, first, not to cheat people, and, second, to treat them properly. Beyond that, there was room for discu...”
“Not only to myself or before the mirror or at the hour of my death, which I hope will be long in coming, but in the presence of my children and my wife and in the face of the peaceful life I’m buil...”
“I decided to tell the truth even if it meant being pointed at.”
“Does this mean that in some places I'm American and in some places I'm African American and in other places, by logical extension, I'm nobody?”
“I'm American. Why didn't I say I was African American? Because I'm in a foreign country? But can I really consider myself to be in a foreign country when I could go walking back to my own country r...”
“[A]nd the wizened youth trembles more and more violently, wrinkles his nose and then pounces on the story. But only I know the story, the real story. And it is simple and cruel and true and it shou...”
“So everything lets us down, including curiosity and honesty and what we love best. Yes, said the voice, but cheer up, it's fun in the end.”
“The American mirror, said the voice, the sad American mirror of wealth and poverty and constant useless metamorphosis, the mirror that sails and whose sails are pain.”
“Then he went out without touching anything and put his arm around Ingeborg, and like that, with their arms around each other, they returned to the village while the whole past of the universe fell ...”
