Milorad Pavić > Quotes

“When we read, it is not ours to absorb all that is written. Our thoughts are jealous and they constantly blank out the thoughts of others, for there is not room enough in us for two scents at one time.”
― Milorad Pavic, Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel in 100,000 Words

“Houses are like books: so many of them around you, yet you only look at a few and visit or reside in fewer still.”
― Milorad Pavic

“I dream in a language I do not understand when I'm awake.”
― Milorad Pavić, Dictionary of the Khazars

“Tvoja prošlost se krije u tvom ćutanju, tvoja sadašnjica u tvom govoru, a tvoja budućnost u tvojim pogrešnim koracima.

Buku je lako napraviti. Napravi, ako možeš, tišinu!”
― Milorad Pavić

“It is not I who mix the colors but your own vision,' he answered. 'I only place them next to one another on the wall in their natural state; it is the observer who mixes the colors in his own eye, like porridge. Therein lies the secret. The better the porridge, the better the painting, but you cannot make good porridge from bad buckwheat. Therefore, faith in seeing, listening, and reading is more important than faith in painting, singing, or writing.'

He took blue and red and placed them next to each other, painting the eyes of an angel. And I saw the angel's eyes turn violet.

'I work with something like a dictionary of colors,' Nikon added, 'and from it the observer composes sentences and books, in other words, images. You could do the same with writing. Why shouldn't someone create a dictionary of words that make up one book and let the reader himself assemble the words into a whole?”
― Milorad Pavic, Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel

“Unutrašnja strana vetra je ona koja ostaje suva dok vetar duva kroz kišu."
"Bilo je nešto što nikako nije uspevala da uklopi u svoju čistu sliku sveta. To su bili snovi. Otkud u tako jednostavnom životu, u kome se može trčati samo između dva uha, svake večeri nešto tako neobjašnjivo kao što su snovi? Nešto što traje i posle smrti."
"Lingvistika snova govorila je jasno da postoji prilog vremena sanjanog i da put do sadašnjice vodi preko budućnosti, i to kroz san. Jer ni prošlog vremena nema u snovima. Sve liči na nešto još nedoživljeno, na neku čudnu sutrašnjicu koja je počela unapred. Na neki predujam uzet od budućeg života, na budućnost koja se ostvaruje pošto je sanjač izbegao neminovno SADA."
"Ljubav je kao ptica u kavezu; ako je svaki dan ne nahraniš, ugine."
"OTVARAM VRATA, U SOBU ULAZI MESEČINA, KROZ MESEČINU ULAZIM JA."
"Ničega tajanstvenog, nažalost, nema na svetu. Svet nije pun tajni, svet je pun ušiju koje pište. Čitava priča može da stane u pucanj biča."
"Svi smo mi zidari vremena, teramo senke i hvatamo vodu na pupak; svak zida od časova svoju kuću, svak od vremena svoj uljanik podiže i svoj med bere, vreme u mehovima nosimo da nam vatru raspiruje."
"Kada se zagledamo u svoju dušu, vidimo je kakva je ona bila pre mnogo hiljada godina, a ne kakva je sada, jer toliko treba da naš pogled stigne do duše i da je osmotri, to jest, toliko vremena treba da svetlost duše stigne do našeg unutrašnjeg oka i da ga obasja. Ponekad tako vidimo dušu koje odavno nema.”
― Milorad Pavić, The Inner Side of the Wind, or The Novel of Hero and Leander

“He was half of something. A strong, beautiful, talented half of something that was, perhaps, even stronger, greater and more beautiful than he. He was, then, the magical half of something magnificent and unfathomable. She was a complete whole. A small, disoriented, not very strong or harmonius whole, but a whole all the same.”
― Milorad Pavić, The Inner Side of the Wind

“Unfortunate and wretched are those who have respected a book they did not love and hated those they did.”
― Milorad Pavic

“And so, when I began to read the proffered pages, I at one moment lost the train of thought in the text and drowned it in my own feelings. In these seconds of absence and self-oblivion, centuries passed with every read but uncomprehended and unabsorbed line, and when, after a few moments, I came to and re-established contact with the text, I knew that the reader who returns from the open seas of his feelings is no longer the same reader who embarked on that sea only a short while ago.”
― Milorad Pavić, Dictionary of the Khazars

“... ako otkriješ tajnu, postaješ deo tajne.

Ja sam ovog jutra opet lagala u snu. A laž ima miris.

Svak može da umre, ali svak ne može da se rodi. Oni najbolji ostaju nerođeni.

Poslednjih sedmica i moji snovi zaudaraju. Gusti kao kačamak i crni kao katran. A kroz njih teku ogromne količine vremena, kao reke ponornice, iako pri buđenju nisam starija no inače i ranije. Kao da postoje dva vremena u mom životu. Od jednog se ne stari nego se troši nešto drugo umesto tela. Karma? Jesu li naše telo i duša gorivo? Gorivo čega? Da li je vreme pogon na koji se kreće telo, a Večnost gorivo duše?

Jednina, tačka i sadašnji trenutak, eto od čega je sastavljen ceo tvoj mehanički svet i njegova računica.

U srcu ne postoji prostor, u duši ne postoji vreme...

SNOVI SE ZABORAVE ČIM PROĐEŠ KROZ NAJBLIŽA VRATA. OD NJIH TADA OSTAJE SAMO KOSTUR. ALI, KAKO ZABORAVITI JEZIK NA KOJEM SANJAŠ I S KOJIM SI ODRASTAO?

Ne znam da li znaš da se šume sele? Kada krenu, one polako i dugo putuju tražeći sebi bolje mesto. Najradije s jeseni polaze na put... Kao ptice. Ili kao čovek...

SNOVI NE STARE. ONI SU VEČNI. ONI SU JEDINI VEČITI DEO ČOVEČANSTVA...”
― Milorad Pavić

“Один из верных путей в истинное будущее – это идти в том направлении, в котором растет твой страх”
― Milorad Pavić, Dictionary of the Khazars

“And he gave me a few of the Xeroxed sheets of paper lying on the table in front of him. As he passed them to me, his thumb brushed mine and I trembled from the touch. I had the sensation that our past and our future were in our fingers and that they had touched. And so, when I began to read the proffered pages, I at one moment lost the train of thought in the text and drowned it in my own feelings. In these seconds of absence and self-oblivion, centuries passed with every read but uncomprehended and unabsorbed line, and when, after a few moments, I came to and re-established contact with the text, I knew that the reader who returns from the open seas of his feelings is no longer the same reader who embarked on that sea only a short while ago. I gained and learned more by not reading than by reading those pages...”
― Milorad Pavic, Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel

“Един от сигурните пътища в истинското бъдеще (защото има и лъжливи видове бъдеще) е да вървиш в посоката, в която расте твоят страх.”
― Milorad Pavić, Dictionary of the Khazars

“Sneg je uvek beo, ali je svake godine drugačiji. Tako je i sa ljubavlju. Nije važno koliko je stara, nego da li se menja ili ne. Ako kažeš: moja ljubav je već tri godine ista, znaj da ti je ljubav umrla. Ljubav živi samo dok se menja. Kad prestane da se menja, to je kraj.”
― Milorad Pavić

“ZAR NE VIDIŠ DA NI TO LICE NA TEBI NIJE TVOJE? POGLEDAJ NA BILO KOJU FRESKU ILI SLIKU PA ĆEŠ GA ZAČAS NAĆI. TEBI JE SAMO PRIVREMENO DATO NA ČUVANJE, DA GA MALO NOSIŠ, KAO TUĐ ŠEŠIR, PA ĆE OTIĆI DALJE. TO ISTO VREDI I ZA TVOJ GLAS I ZVIŽDUK. OSVRNI SE, UOSTALOM, NA SVOJU SENKU, TU NA ZIDU, KOJA JE RASLA I GOJILA SE S TOBOM. U NJU ĆEŠ JEDNOM LEĆI POSLEDNJI PUT I ONA ĆE TE NADŽIVETI.”
― Milorad Pavić

“Da li znaš da čitaš poljupce? Poljupci su kao ljubavna pisma. Mogu se pročitati, a mogu se baciti nepročitani. Poljubac može da znači zdravo! Ili laku noć, zbogom, ili dobro jutro! On znači doviđenja, nosi izdaju i smrt, ili bolest, govori dobro došli, seti me se, ili srećan put! Poljubac je zalog sreće, sećanje, laž, obećanje, ili dug sa kamatom. Vesnik radosti ili nesreće. Kroz poljubac jedno naše telo odlazi u naše drugo telo...”
― Milorad Pavić

“Любовь бывает разных видов. Одну можно подцепить только вилкой, другую едят руками, как устриц, иную следует резать ножом, чтобы не удушила тебя, а бывает и такая жидкая, что без ложки не обойтись. Но есть и такая, как яблоко, которое съел Адам.”
― Milorad Pavić, Внутренняя сторона ветра. Роман о Геро и Леандре.

“He took blue and red and placed them next to each other, painting the eyes of an angel. And I saw the angel's eyes turn violet”
― Pavich Milorad, Dictionary of the Khazars

“A bird foraging for food in the swamps and marshes sinks rapidly if it doesn't move. It has to keep pulling its feet out of the mire to move on, regardless of whether it has caught something or not. And the same applies to us and to our love. We have to move on, we can't stay where we are, because we'll sink.”
― Milorad Pavić, Dictionary of the Khazars

“On je bio polovina nečega. Snažna, lepa i darovita polovina nečega, što je možda bilo još snažnije, veće i lepše od njega. Bio je, dakle, čarobna polovina nečega veličanstvenog i nedokučivog. A ona, ona je bila potpuna celina. Mala, dezorijentisana, ne mnogo snažna ni skladna celina, ali celina.”
― Milorad Pavić, Unutrašnja strana vetra

“The guard locks the gates of the turbeh, letting the heavy sound of the lock fall into the dark interior, as though leaving the name of the key inside. Dispirited, like me, he sits down on the stone beside me and closes his eyes. Just when I think he has dozed off in his part of the shade, the guard lifts his hand and points to a moth fluttering above the entrance to the tomb, having come out of our clothes or the Persian carpets in the turbeh.
"You see," he says to me casually, "the moth is way up there by the white wall of the doorway, and it is visible only because it moves. From here it almost looks like a bird in the sky. That's probably how the moth sees the wall, and only we know it is wrong. But it doesn't know that we know. It doesn't even know we exist. You try to communicate with it if you can. Can you tell it anything in a way it understands; can you be sure it understood you completely?"
"I don't know," I replied. "Can You?"
"Yes," the old man said quietly, and with a clap of his hands he killed the moth, then profered its crushed body on the palm of his hand.
"Do you think it didn't understand what I told it?"
"You can do the same thing with a candle, extinguish it with your two fingers to prove you exist," I commented.
"Certainly, if a candle is capable of dying... Now, imagine," he went on, "that there is somebody who knows about us what we know about the moth. Somebody who knows how, with what, and why this space that we call the sky and assume to be boundless, is bounded-- somebody who cannot approach us to let us know that he exists except in one way-- by killing us. Somebody, on whose garments we are nourished, somebody who carries our death in his hand like a tongue, as a means of communicating with us. By killing us, this anonymous being informs us about himself. And we, through our deaths, which may be no more than a warning to some wayfarer sitting alongside the assassin, we, I say, can at the last moment perceive, as through an opened door, new fields and other boundaries. This sixth and highest degree of deathly fear (where there is no memory) is what holds and links us anonymous participants in the game. The hierarchy of death is, in fact, the only thing that makes possible a system of contacts between the various levels of reality in an otherwise vast space where deaths endlessly repeat themselves like echoes within echoes...”
― Milorad Pavic

“Unutrašnja strana vetra je ona koja ostane suva dok vetar duva kroz kišu.”
― Milorad Pavić, Unutrašnja strana vetra

“Each of us promenades his thought, like a monkey on a leash. When you read, you always have to such monkeys: your own and one belonging to someone else. Or, even worse, a monkey and a hyena. Now, consider what you will feed them. For a hyena does not eat the same things as a monkey...”
― Milorad Pavić, Dictionary of the Khazars

“Nekoliko stotina godina posle tog događaja uhvaćene su na obalama Kaspijskog mora dve kornjače na kojima su bile ispisane poruke. Poruka jedne žene i jednog čoveka koji su se voleli. Kornjače su još uvek išle zajedno i na njima su se mogle pročitati poruke zaljubljenih.
Muška poruka je glasila:

Ti si kao ona devojka koja nikad nije ustajala rano, pa kad se udala u susedno selo i prvi put morala rano ustati, ugledala slanu na poljima i rekla svekrvi: ovo u našem selu nema! Tako kao ona, i ti misliš da na svetu nema ljubavi, jer nikada nisi bila budna dovoljno rano da je sretneš, mada je ona svakog jutra tu na vreme...

Ženska poruka bila je kraća, od samo nekoliko reči:

Moj zavičaj je tišina, moja hrana ćutanje. Sedim u svome imenu kao veslač u čamcu. Ne mogu da zaspim koliko te mrzim.”
― Milorad Pavić

“Человек думает, что умереть легко. Лег и умер. Но это не так просто. Все, что за нами и перед нами, длится гораздо дольше, чем мы предполагаем. Вот, например, знаешь ли ты, какая разница между сердцем и душой? Когда мы обратим наш внутренний взгляд на свое сердце, мы увидим его таким, какое оно в данный момент. Когда же посмотрим в нашу душу, она окажется такой, какой была много тысяч лет назад, а не такой, какая она сейчас, потому что именно столько нужно нашему взгляду, чтобы добраться до души и рассмотреть ее, - другими словами, столько времени требуется для того, чтобы свет души достиг нашего внутреннего взора и осветил его. Иногда таким образом мы видим душу, которой давно нет. Раз такое дело с душой, то что же говорить о смерти. Смерть человека длится столько же лет, сколько и его жизнь, а может быть, и гораздо дольше, потому что смерть - это сложное хозяйство, работа и усилие, более трудное и длительное, чем человеческая жизнь...
Твоя смерть может жить вдвое дольше, чем ты...”
― Milorad Pavić, Внутренняя сторона ветра. Роман о Геро и Леандре.

“Finally, in Bosnia I forgot my own name. That’s an excellent basis for starting this course, I thought. Just as the thought of you is an excellent basis for a start. So as not to forget your name as well, I had to keep writing it down on water. On the Sava River.

I don’t know if you know that forests migrate?”
― Milorad Pavić, Кутија за писање

“Любовь подобна птице в клетке: если ее не кормить каждый день, она погибнет”
― Milorad Pavić, Внутренняя сторона ветра. Роман о Геро и Леандре.

“You know what, my dear, I learned something in war. Those of my peers in the unit who were to die earlier were wiser and knew more about the world around them than the others, and that is how we recognized them and sensed that they would soon be killed. They knew that every murder is committed with a thousand years of premeditation . . . The others, who were to die later, were more stupid. But none of that had anything to do with the innate brightness or dull-wittedness of the ones or the others. So, there are two cases. We belong to the latter.' 'How do you mean?' 'We are happy lovers. Aren't we? And happiness makes one stupid. Happiness and wisdom do not go together, just as body and thought do not go together. Because only pain is the thought of the body. In other words, happy people become stupid people. It is only when they get tired of their happiness that lovers can become wise again, if that is what they otherwise are. So let us not decide now about unbelting my sabre . . . Your steps”
― Milorad Pavić, Last love in Constantinople

“When we read, it is not ours to absorb all that is written. Our thoughts are jealous and they constantly black out the thoughts of others, for there is not room enough in us for two scents at on time.”
― Milorad Pavić, Dictionary of the Khazars - Androgynous Edition

“Time comes not from the ground but from the underground. Time belongs to Satan; he carries it like a skein in the pocket of the devil, unravels it when his mysterious economies do dictate, and it should be wrested away from him. For, if one can ask and receive eternity from God, then we can take the opposite of eternity --time-- only from Satan...”
― Milorad Pavić, Dictionary of the Khazars