Jelena > Jelena's Quotes

“Happiness is the longing for repetition.”
― Milan Kundera

“We pass through the present with our eyes blindfolded. We are permitted merely to sense and guess at what we are actually experiencing. Only later when the cloth is untied can we glance at the past and find out what we have experienced and what meaning it has.”
― Milan Kundera, Laughable Loves

“Sada ću misliti na tebe, draga, samo na tebe, cele noći. Misliću samo na tebe, to je jedini način da osetim samog sebe, ako te držim u svom središtu kao drvo, ako se malo - pomalo odvojim od stabla koje me drži i vodi, ako oprezno lebdim oko tebe, opipavajući vazduh svakim listom (zelenim, zelenim, ja i ti, sočno stablo i zeleno lišće: zeleno, zeleno) ne udaljavajući se od tebe, ne dopuštajući da bilo ko drugi prodre između mene i tebe, učini da ne mislim na tebe, ma i na trenutak me liši saznanja da ova noć kruži ka svitanju i da će tamo, s druge strane, tamo gde živiš i spavaš, biti ponovo noć kad zajedno stignemo i uđemo u tvoju kuću, popnemo se uza stepenice na tremu, upalimo svetla, pomilujemo tvog psa, popijemo kafu, dugo se gledamo pre nego što te ja zagrlim (da te držim u svom središtu kao drvo) i povedem te ka stepeništu (ali nema nikakve staklene kugle) i počnemo da se penjemo, penjemo, vrata su zatvorena, ali imam ključ u džepu...

Ko će znati kako je moglo da se završi nešto što nije čak ni počelo, što je krenulo iz sredine i nestalo bez jasnih obrisa, raspršivši se na ivici druge magle.

... to odsustvo koje se sada stani u mojoj kući samca, dotiče moj jastuk svojom zlatnom meduzom, primorava me da pišem ovo što pišem u besmislenoj nadi da postoji bajalica, slatki golem od reči.

... tu ima nekih rupa i bičeva, neka voda teče niz lice i zaslepljuje i grize, neki zvuk kao tutnjava iz dubina, trenutak bez vremena, nepodnošljivo lep.

... za mene je bila kao topola od bronze i sna...

... to je pre odgovor na smrt i na ništavilo, stavljanje stvari i vremena na određeno mesto, uvođenje vremena i prolaza, protivljenje vremenu punom rupa i tamnih mesta.

Ti koji me čitaš, nije li se i tebi desilo nešto što počinje kao san i vraća se u mnogim snovima ali to nije to, nije samo san? Nešto što jeste tu, ali gde, i kako; nešto što prolazi kroz snove, razume se, puki san ali posle takođe tu, na drugi način jer je meko i puno rupa, ali tu dok pereš zube, u dnu lavaboa ga i dalje vidiš kad ispljuneš pastu za zube ili stavljaš lice pod hladnu vodu, već istanjeno ali još zalepljeno za pidžamu, u korenu jezika dok podgrevaš kafu, tu ali gde, kako, zalepljeno za jutro, sa svojom tišinom u koju već ulaze zvuci dana, vesti na radiju koje smo pustili jer smo budni i jer smo ustali i svet i dalje ide svojim putem.

... kako je to moguće, šta je to bilo, šta smo to bili u snu koji je međutim nešto drugo, svako malo se vraća i tu je, ali gde je to tu?

... ta trideset i jedna godina nije ono što je važno, mnogo je gori ovaj prelazak iz sna u reči, rupa između onoga što je i dalje ovde ali se sve više predaje jasnoj ošztici stvari s ove strane, tom nožu od reči koje i dalje i dalje ispisujem i koje više nisu to što je i dalje tu, ali gde, kako.

Ovde je nešto trebalo da bude rečeno bez reči, samo slušajući neki neodređen šum.

... postoji neka slika nečega priteranog uza zid, nečega opkoljenog: duboka istina, okružena lažima nepopravljivog konformizma.

Probuditi se, probuditi se na svaki način, ali Valentina je osećala da bi samo nešto što bi ličilo na bič moglo da je razbudi.”
― Julio Cortazar

“Svaki nered se opravdava ako teži da izađe iz sebe, možda se kroz ludilo može dospjeti do razuma koji neće biti onaj razum čiji je nedostatak ludilo.”
― Julio Cortazar

“Nothing is more comical than seriousness understood as a virtue that has to precede all important literature”
― Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

“The best literature is always a take [in the musical sense]; there is an implicit risk in its execution, a margin of danger that is the pleasure of the flight, of the love, carrying with it a tangible loss but also a total engagement that, on another level, lends the theater its unparalleled imperfection faced with the perfection of film.

I don’t want to write anything but takes.”
― Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

“What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“...So I stopped talking about it. There's no need to talk, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“Desires, memories, fears, passions form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again.”
― Bernhard Schlink, The Reader

“La literatura es mentir bien la verdad”
― Juan Carlos Onetti

“Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul...”
― Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian

“The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools.”
― Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian

“My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.”
― Jack Kerouac

“It's never been a perfect world. It's never going to be. It's going to be hard and scary, and if you're lucky, wonderful and awe-inspiring. But you have to push through the bad parts to get to the good.”
― Carrie Ryan, The Dead-Tossed Waves

“Patience, he thought. So much of this was patience - waiting, and thinking and doing things right. So much of all this, so much of all living was patience and thinking.”
― Gary Paulsen, Hatchet

“Even so, I must admire your skill.
You are so gracefully insane.”
― Anne Sexton

“I am alone here in my own mind.
There is no map
and there is no road.
It is one of a kind
just as yours is.”
― Anne Sexton

“All day I've built
a lifetime and now
the sun sinks to
undo it. ”
― Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems

“It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“She thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist's religion of doing good for the sake of goodness.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“Peter would think her sentimental. So she was. For she had come to feel that it was the only thing worth saying – what one felt. Cleverness was silly. One must say simply what one felt.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“She belonged to a different age, but being so entire, so complete, would always stand up on the horizon, stone-white, eminent, like a lighthouse marking some past stage on this adventurous, long, long voyage, this interminable --- this interminable life.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

“Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness.”
― Italo Calvino

“Melancholia is, I believe, a musical problem: a dissonance, a change in rhythm. While on the outside everything happens with the vertiginous rhythm of a cataract, on the inside is the exhausted adagio of drops of water falling from time to tired time. For this reason the outside, seen from the melancholic inside, appears absurd and unreal, and constitutes ‘the farce we all must play’. But for an instant – because of a wild music, or a drug, or the sexual act carried to its climax – the very slow rhythm of the melancholic soul does not only rise to that of the outside world: it overtakes it with an ineffably blissful exorbitance, and the soul then thrills animated by delirious new energies”
― Alejandra Pizarnik

“Je suis comme ça. Ou j'oublie tout de suite ou je n'oublie jamais."

Samuel BECKETT, En attendant Godot

I'm like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget. ”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“I use the words you taught me. If they don't mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent.”
― Samuel Beckett, Endgame

“Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for one the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say? It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflexion, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in the immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come -- ”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Words are all we have.”
― Samuel Beckett

“We have to go from what is essentially an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model, which is based on linearity and conformity and batching people. We have to move to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture. We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process; it's an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.”
― Ken Robinson