César Aira > Quotes

“A reader of mine is a deluxe reader, not because I’m so great but because in order to get to me you have to take a path through literature, not through some books bought out of curiosity at the bookstore. A reader of mine has to have read other things.”
― César Aira

“At this point there's something I should explain about myself, which is that I don't talk much, probably too little, and I think this has been detrimental to my social life. It's not that I have trouble expressing myself, or no more than people generally have when they're trying to put something complex into words. I'd even say I have less trouble than most because my long involvement with literature has given me a better-than-average capacity for handling language. But I have no gift for small talk, and there's no point trying to learn or pretend; it wouldn't be convincing. My conversational style is spasmodic (someone once described it as "hollowing"). Every sentence opens up gaps, which require new beginnings. I can't maintain any continuity. In short, I speak when I have something to say. My problem, I suppose - and this may be an effect of involvement with literature - is that I attribute too much importance to the subject. For me, it's never simply a question of "talking" but always a question of "what to talk about". And the effort of weighing up potential subjects kills the spontaneity of dialogue. In other words, when everything you say has to be "worth the effort", it's too much effort to go on talking. I envy people who can launch into a conversation with gusto and energy, and keep it going. I envy them that human contact, so full of promise, a living reality from which, in my mute isolation, I feel excluded. "But what do they talk about?" I wonder, which is obviously the wrong question to ask. The crabbed awkwardness of my social interactions is a result of this failing on my part. Looking back, I can see that it was responsible for most of my missed opportunities and almost all the woes of solitude. The older I get, the more convinced I am that this is a mutilation, for which my professional success cannot compensate, much less my "rich inner life." And I've never been able to resolve the conundrum that conversationalists pose for me: how do they keep coming up with things to talk about? I don't even wonder about it anymore, perhaps because I know there's no answer.”
― César Aira

“He couldn’t believe that sleep had robbed him of this spectacle night after night. Such are the writer’s privileges, he thought, nostalgic already for the present.”
― César Aira, Varamo

“Each of us is the ultimate expert on the gentleness and understanding we deserve.”
― César Aira, How I Became a Nun

“The strangeness that made everything sparkle came from me. Worlds rose out of my bottomless perplexity”
― Cesar Aira, The Literary Conference

“Why is it that drama always starts late? Whereas comedy always seems to have started already.”
― César Aira, How I Became a Nun

“Forgetting is like a great alchemy free of secrets, limpid, transforming everything to the present. In the end it makes our lives into this visible and tangible thing we hold in our hands, with no folds left hidden in the past.”
― César Aira, The Seamstress and the Wind

“Changing the subject is one of the most difficult arts to master, the key to almost all the others.”
― César Aira, An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter

“He had developed a superstitious fear of the instant, that tiny hole through which all the time available to human beings must pass.”
― César Aira, Varamo

“…every mind is shaped by its own experiences and memories and knowledge, and what makes it unique is the grand total and extremely personal nature of the collection of all the data that have made it what it is. Each person possesses a mind with powers that are, whether great or small, always unique, powers that belong to them alone. This renders them capable of carrying out a feat, whether grandiose or banal, that only they could have carried out.”
― César Aira, The Literary Conference

“Everything is made of words, and the words had done their job. I could even say they had done it well. They had risen in a confusing swarm and spun around in spirals, ever higher, colliding and separating, golden insects, messengers of friendship and knowledge, higher, higher, into that region of the sky where the day turns into night and reality into dreams, regal words on their nuptial flight, always higher, until their marriage is finally consummated at the summit of the world.”
― César Aira, The Conversations

“I'm following it perfectly. Although, if this were a novel, I'd take the trouble to reread the last paragraph as carefully as possible.”
― César Aira, The Hare

“I don't know who explained this rule to me; maybe it was the product of my own speculations and fantasies. That would have been typical: I was always inventing stories and machinations to make sense of things I didn't understand, and I understood almost nothing.”
― Cesar Aira

“O era contradictorio, o había que redefinir el término "improvisación". Siempre se piensa que improvisar es actuar sin pensar. Pero si uno hace una cosa por un impulso, o porque le da la gana, o directamente sin saber por qué, de todas maneras es uno el que la hace, y uno tiene una historia que lo ha llevado a ese punto de su vida; y entonces, lejos de no haber pensado ese acto, no podría haberlo pensado más: lo ha estado pensando cada minuto desde que nació.”
― César Aira, La villa

“I had a real life completely separate from beliefs, from the common reality made up of shared beliefs...”
― César Aira, How I Became a Nun

“Every morning, and every night, I resolved to start a new life, but I always procrastinated, acquiescing to my ailing willpower. And Saturday at eleven o’clock at night was not the right moment to make important decisions.”
― César Aira, Dinner

“Everyone likes ice cream," he said, white with rage. The mask of patience was slipping, and I don't know how I managed to hold back my tears. "Everyone except you, son, because you're a moron.”
― César Aira, How I Became a Nun

“I was sole keeper and mistress of the impossible. I possessed the keys to pain.”
― César Aira, How I Became a Nun

“This was one of those situations in which the whole is not enough. Perhaps because there were other "wholes," or because the "whole" made up by the speaker and his personal world rotates like a planet, and the combined effect of rotation and orbital movement is to keep certain sides of certain planets permanently hidden.”
― César Aira, An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter

“Each instant was different and new and unrepeatable. That was the very nature of time, ceaselessly realizing itself, in every life.”
― César Aira, How I Became a Nun

“But the Australians, what do the Australians do? How do they structure their landscape? For a start they postulate a primal builder, whose work they presume only to interpret: the mythical animal who was active in the “dreamtime,” that is, a primal era, beyond verification, as the name indicates. A time of sleep. The visible landscape is an effect of causes that are to be found in the dreamtime. For example, the snake that dragged itself over this plain creating these undulations, etc., etc. These.. curious Aborigines make sure their eyes are closed while events take place, which allows them to see places as records of events. But what they see is a kind of dream, and they wake into a reverie, since the real story (the snake, not the hills) happened while they were asleep.”
― César Aira, Ghosts

“It is not that I am a genius or exceptionally gifted, not by any means. Quite the contrary. What Happened (I shall try to explain it) is that every mind is shaped by its own experiences and memories and knowledge, and what makes it unique is the grand total and extremely personal nature of the collection of all the data that have made it what it is. Each person possesses a mind with powers that are, whether great or small, always unique, powers that belong to them alone. This renders them capable of carrying out a feat, whether grandiose or banal, that only they could have carried out. In this case, all others had failed because they had counted on the simple quantitative progression of intelligence and ingenuity, when what was required was an unspecified quantity, but of the appropriate quality, of both. My own intelligence is quite minimal, a fact that I have ascertained at great cost to myself. It has been just barely adequate to keep me afloat in the tempestuous waters of life. Yet, its quality is unique; not because I decided it would be, but rather because that is how it must be.”
― César Aira

“Were the “pampas,” perhaps, flatter than the land they were crossing? He doubted it; what could be flatter than a horizontal plane?”
― César Aira, An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter

“Poison or elixir, narcotic or aphrodisiac, whatever it was, this flower, relic of a day in the life of an accidental writer, an inadvertent counterfeiter leaving his traces in code, the birds were coming to try it, performing a dance for no one and flying up toward the moon.”
― César Aira, Varamo

“Like in a dream, everything seemed to be on the point of vanishing but at the same time ablaze with persistent reality.”
― César Aira, Dinner

“Yo reservaba mi interioridad, mientras él ponía la suya a la vista. Ocultar algo es tener algo que ocultar. Yo no lo tenía, pero ocultaba, asomaba al mundo como quien viene de enterrar un tesoro.”
― César Aira, How I Became a Nun

“...the transformation would be accomplished not in the dimension of time but in that of meaning.”
― César Aira, An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter

“A certain peace had come over me. I was discovering that time, long-term time made of days, weeks and months, and not of horrific moments as before, was operating in my favor. Nothing else was, but that didn't worry me. Time was enough. I clung on to time, and consequently to learning, the only human activity that makes time our ally.”
― César Aira

“So familiar that it didn't even register in the conversation; but it did reappear when I laid it out on the table of my dreams.”
― César Aira, Conversations

“The voice, for its part, has the peculiarity that when released it carries the weight of the body from which it has come; since that weight is erotic reality, lovers believe they can embrace words of love, they believe they can make them into a continuum of love that will last forever.”
― César Aira, The Seamstress and the Wind