Daniel Saldaña París > Quotes

“For her, marriage was a sweetened version of murder.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, En medio de extrañas víctimas

“I haven’t seen Erre for three years and haven’t spent more than half an hour talking to him in the last decade. True, there was a time when his love and his betrayal formed a kind of schism for me, a rite of passage for entering the world of heterosexual relationships, with their habitual dose of frustration and violence, but so many things have happened since then that, with the benefit of hindsight, I can only say it was an adolescent affair, with all the drama and intensity that implies.
I don’t bear Erre any grudges, but neither do I have tender feelings for him, above all because I perceive a discontinuity in my own life that means I find it very hard to identify with the person I was ten or fifteen years ago. (At times I even find it hard to identify with the person I was eight months ago, two weeks, ten minutes ago: my identity is a rodeo bull that bucks and jumps around the ring, throwing off anyone who tries to mount it.)”
― Daniel Saldaña París, The Dance and the Fire

“Tener la culpa es como llevar dentro del bolsillo del pantalón un helado de vainilla: puedes hacer como que no existe, pero en algún momento terminará por derretirse e incomodarte y la mancha será visible para todos.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, En medio de extrañas víctimas

“I can never figure out if he really believes the things he says he believes in, or if he's just killing time, or gets pumped up by fake news the way other people do about sport. He reels off information that not even the most poorly informed of my aunts and uncles would dream of repeating in a co-op group chat, and for Conejo it's all true, with no room for doubt: truth is a state of mind, a lifestyle choice.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, The Dance and the Fire

“The homeless, down-and-outs, misfits, and drug addicts spend many hours in the library, in all libraries. Some go there to check their email, read the newspaper, or just doze. They are hard to miss among the university students revising for exams: men in rags and women with black nails who shout aloud every so often or cough without any attempt to muffle the sound. The library is their kingdom. During the day, readers and junkies cohabit in this neutral, hospitable land. There’s a sort of poetic justice in the fact that those two groups exist in such close proximity in the library, hinting at a strong bond between reading and drug dependency.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, Planes Flying over a Monster: Essays

“Tengo, más bien, una biblioteca fantasma: el recuerdo de los libros que podrían pertenecerme si los hubiera conservado.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, Aviones sobrevolando un monstruo

“Erre’s pain is the fruit of a moral fault, for example; the result of a karma thirsting for equilibrium making its presence felt by fucking up his joints.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, The Dance and the Fire

“Una relación amorosa puede tomar, a veces, la forma de una ciudad moderna, construida sobre los vestigios de civilizaciones extintas: quedan trazos, nombres, piedras de ese pasado idílico, pero uno se fija más en el tráfico insoportable del presente, en las nubes marrones de los incendios cercanos.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, El baile y el incendio

“When, as a teenager, I told Erre all this he came to the rather hasty conclusion that in order to get away scot-free, the old man must have been a government informer, but I suspect that in fact his innate cowardice kept him, by the grace of Marx, slightly on the margins of direct action and more on the side of convoluted revolutionary debate (a practice he still enjoys, now on the telephone, when he’s had a few too many drinks).”
― Daniel Saldaña París, The Dance and the Fire

“I understand that Dad is a sort of oracle, so disillusioned by the future he foresees that he’s decided to completely ignore it, like a natural baritone who is forced to sing in another vocal range. He makes himself sing the song of the past, and lives there like a hibernating squirrel with everything he needs, never having to poke his nose out into the inclement present.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, The Dance and the Fire

“There’s something depressing about hanging out with people who’ve known you forever. They always expect you to be the same as you were before, to embody that person preserved in the formaldehyde of memory, with the assumption of an inalienable lifetime right to them.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, The Dance and the Fire

“Las oficinas son como las monarquías; por eso, si alguien comienza a enloquecer, así sea sutilmente, en una oficina, toda su conversación se orienta hacia los dichos y hechos del monarca.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, En medio de extrañas víctimas

“Quizás todo sería más fácil si no me hubiera convencido a mí mismo de que tenía talento.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, El baile y el incendio

“Pero lo cierto es que no quiero tener sexo, y tampoco ella. A veces es fácil confundir cualquier tristeza o la ansiedad con el deseo; lo he hablado con amigos y es algo que nos pasa, sobre todo, a los hombres: traducimos sentimientos más complejos al idioma simplón de los impulsos sexuales y el hambre.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, El baile y el incendio

“Where in the work of these people was love, the unmoving motor of all the stars, fixed point and vertex of the actions of men of real daring?”
― Daniel Saldaña París, En medio de extrañas víctimas

“Don’t you think it’s odd the way a rumor sometimes becomes a prophecy?”
― Daniel Saldaña París, The Dance and the Fire

“He’s weary. The speed of events seems to overtake him. He writes long-winded rants on Facebook about the banality of the world and his only likes are from the same sort of men and middle-aged women with high-up hairdos and low-level passions.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, The Dance and the Fire

“Aquel día sentí esa felicidad que a partir de los treinta años se deja de sentir para siempre, sea cual sea la biografía de cada uno: la felicidad de creer que la vida está empezando.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, El baile y el incendio

“That whole sequence was typical of the period when we were dating: a chase, the pantomime of a brawl, gauche, suppressed desire, and then a step back, like a hand pulling away on contact with a hot pan. But we didn’t know any better because that was the era of first times, so we loved, desired each other in an erratic, syncopated way, and later we’d catch each other’s eye in class and believe for an instant in telepathy.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, The Dance and the Fire

“Una parte de mí sabe que solo desde la decepción, desde el fracaso anticipado y la falta absoluta de esperanza, aprenderé a arder en el grado justo que mi voluntad decida.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, El baile y el incendio

“Coincidences are like oysters opening simultaneously, a choir of bivalves intoning the song of meaning. The first coincidence opens, offers up its pearl; the others don’t want to be left behind.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, The Dance and the Fire

“Time is cyclical, and its only aim is to fuck us all up.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, The Dance and the Fire

“Lots of men are like that; they seem brilliantly intelligent for a moment, and then you realize they are databases, learned formulas and cast-iron convictions that, like anything ferric, end up rusting on contact with life. Intelligence without self-doubt is about as much use as a chocolate coffee pot. I had a suspicion of all that back then, but the first rush of teenage hormones clouded my judgment.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, The Dance and the Fire

“¿Cómo es posible que esta mujer sepa tantas cosas sobre mi vida y yo la haya borrado casi por completo (retengo, todavía, esa única imagen de ella en la cafetería)? ¿Puedo culpar a mi alto consumo de drogas durante varios años? ¿Al hecho de que dejé Cuernavaca como quien deja un vicio, de que me arranqué la ciudad como si me extirpara el apéndice? Quizás mi dolor físico tiene un correlato neurológico, también: una devastación silenciosa que se va robando partes enteras de mi vida sin que yo me dé cuenta.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, El baile y el incendio

“Memories are fabrications that bear little relationship to their supposed origins, and each and every time we recall something, that memory becomes more autonomous, more detached from the past, as if the cord holding it to life itself is fraying until one day, it snaps and the memory bolts, runs free through the fallow field of the spirit, like a liberated goat taking to the hills.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, Ramifications

“He vivido este día antes y volveré a vivirlo, tal vez, en el futuro. Es necesario inventar una rutina, también –o sobre todo– mientras se acaba el mundo. Aferrarse a un conjunto de rituales, recorridos, personas a cuyo lado volver para reconocernos.”
― Daniel Saldaña París, El baile y el incendio