Manuela Zúñiga > Manuela's Quotes

“Сбогуване.
Нова квартира.
Нови сбогувания.
Студентски премествания.
Преместване след развода.
Местене в други държави.
Връщане.
Нова квартира.
Целият живот може да бъде разказан като каталог на преместванията.”
― Георги Господинов, Физика на тъгата

“So we dream on. Thus we invent our lives. We give ourselves a sainted mother, we make our father a hero; and someone’s older brother and someone’s older sister – they become our heroes too. We invent what we love and what we fear. There is always a brave lost brother – and a little lost sister, too. We dream on and on: the best hotel, the perfect family, the resort life. And our dreams escape us almost as vividly as we can imagine them… That’s what happens, like it or not. And because that’s what happens, this is what we need: we need a good, smart bear… Coach Bob knew it all along: you’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. You have to keep passing the open windows.”
― John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

“Safer than we are.” I told Franny. “Safer than love.” “let me tell ya kid,” Franny said to me, squeezing my hand. “Everything’s safer than love.”
― John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

“Just when you begin thinking of yourself as memorable, you run into someone who can't even remember having met you”
― John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

“Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.”
― John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

“Andábamos sin buscarnos, pero sabiendo que andábamos para encontrarnos”
― Julio Cortazar, Rayuela

“She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste.”
― Julio Cortazar, Hopscotch

“Lo que mucha gente llama amar consiste en elegir una mujer y casarse con ella. La eligen, te lo juro, los he visto. Como si se pudiera elegir en el amor, como si no fuera un rayo que te parte los huesos y te deja estaqueado en la mitad del patio. Vos dirás que la eligen porque-la-aman, yo creo que es al vesre. A Beatriz no se la elige, a Julieta no se la elige. Vos no elegís la lluvia que te va a calar hasta los huesos cuando salís de un concierto.”
― Julio Cortázar, Rayuela

“I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature. I discovered that I am not disciplined out of virtue but as a reaction to my negligence, that I appear generous in order to conceal my meanness, that I pass myself off as prudent because I am evil-minded, that I am conciliatory in order not to succumb to my repressed rage, that I am punctual only to hide how little I care about other people’s time. I learned, in short, that love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.”
― Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“We were rooted in the archaic past, nothing radical about us, our bodies, or needs had changed since the first human saw the light of day somewhere in Africa forty thousand years ago or however long Homo sapiens had existed. But we imagined it was different, and so strong was our imaginative power we not only believed that but we also organized ourselves accordingly, as we sat getting drunk in our cafés and darkened clubs, and dancing our dances that presumably were even more clumsy than those performed, shall we say, twenty-five thousand years ago in the glow of a fire somewhere along the Mediterranean coast.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, A Man in Love

“I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)I am never without it (anywhere
I go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)
I fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet)I want no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)”
― E.E. Cummings

“SOLIDAO, LONELINESS.
What is it that we call loneliness. It can't simply be the absence of others, you can be alone and not lonely, and you can be among people and yet be lonely. So what is it? ... it isn't only that others are there, that they fill up the space next to us. But even when they celebrate us or give advice in a friendly conversation, clever, sensitive advice: even then we can be lonely. So loneliness is not something simply connected with the presence of others or with what they do. Then what? What on earth?”
― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

“Aber jeder Schatten ist im letzen doch auch Kind des Lichts, und nur wer Helles und Dunkles, Krieg und Frieden, Aufstieg und Niedergang erfahren, nur der hat wahrhaft gelebt.”
― Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday

“I have seen the universe! It is made of poems!”
― Sjon, The Blue Fox

“While I fear that we're drawn to what abandons us, and to what seems most likely to abandon us, in the end I believe we're defined by what embraces us.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“Angst ist der Schlüssel zum Erfolg und der Hauptgrund für dein Scheitern, Angst ist das zugrunde liegende Dilemma in jeder Geschihte, die du dir über dich selbst erzählst. Und was ist die einzige Chance, die du gegen Angst hast? Folge ihr. Lass dich von ihr leiten.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.”
― Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading

“Life happened because I turned the pages.”
― Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading

“As centuries of dictators have known, an illiterate crowd is the easiest to rule; since the craft of reading cannot be untaught once it has been acquired, the second-best recourse is to limit its scope.”
― Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading

“Reading in bed is a self-centered act, immobile, free from ordinary social conventions, invisible to the world, and one that, because it takes place between the sheets, in the realm of lust and sinful idleness, has something of the thrill of things forbidden.”
― Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading

“We read in slow, long motions, as if drifting in space, weightless. We read full of prejudice, malignantly. We read generously, making excuses for the text, filling gaps, mending faults. And sometimes, when the stars are kind, we read with an intake of breath, with a shudder... as if a memory had suddenly been rescued from a place deep within us--the recognition of something we never knew was there...”
― Manguel Alberto, A History of Reading

“Ostap Bender lay in the dvornik's room, which was warm to the point of reeking, and mentally put the finishing touches on two possible career plans.

He could become a polygamist and move peacefully from town to town, dragging behind him a new suitcase full of valuable items he'd picked up from the latest wife. Or he could go the very next day to the Stargorod Children's Commission and offer them the chance to distribute the as-yet unpainted but brilliantly conceived canvas The Bolsheviks Writing a Letter to Chamberlain, based on the artist Repin's popular painting The Zaporozhian Cossacks Writing a Letter to the Turkish Sultan. If it worked out, this option could bring in something along the line of four hundred rubles.

Ostap had thought up both options during his last stay in Moscow. The polygamy option had been born under the influence of the court report from the evening papers, where it was clearly indicated that some polygamist had only gotten two years without strict isolation. Option number two had taken shape in Bender's mind when he was going through the AARR exhibit on a free ticket.

However, both options had their downsides. It was impossible to begin a career as a polygamist without a wondrous, dapple-gray suit. In addition, he needed at least ten rubles for hospitality expenses and seduction. Of course, he could get married in his green campaign uniform as well, because Bender's masculine power and attraction were absolutely irresistible to provincial, marriage-ready Margaritas; but that would be, as Bender liked to say, "Poor-quality goods. Not clean work." It wasn't all smooth sailing for the painting, either. Purely technical difficulties could arise. Would it be proper to paint Comrade Kalinin in a papakha and a white burka, or Comrade Chicherin naked to the waist?”
― Ilya Ilf, The Twelve Chairs

“Can you say the following phrase in French: "Gentlemen, I haven't eaten in six days"?'

Ippolit Matveevich began haltingly, 'Messieurs... messieurs, je ne, I think, je ne mange pas... six, what is that again... un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six... six... jour. Right: je ne mange pas six jours!'

'That's quite a pronunciation you've got there, Kisa! Still, what do you expect from a beggar. Of course a beggar in European Russia speaks French worse than Millerand.”
― Ilya Ilf, The Twelve Chairs

“Listen up - there's no war that will end all wars.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Denn nichts lenkt den Menschen so von seinem gesunden Urteil ab wie geografische Ortsnamen, geladen mit alter Sehnsucht und bepackt mit tausend Gedankenverbindungen, und wenn er dann hinkommt, ist es alles halb so schön. Aber wer traut sich denn, das zu sagen?”
― Kurt Tucholsky, Schloß Gripsholm

“За онова, което стана, сигурно си има име.
Някой тънък познавач на всичко би го изразил:
как "нещо се е счупило", как неочаквано
с теб сме "заговорили на различни езици".

А не сме. По-просто е.
Езикът си говори с мен
през цялото това тъй ценно време.
И знаеш ли, не сме те споменавали.”
― Иван Ланджев, Ние според мансардата

“историята е незавършена тя служи единствено
да подхранва тъгата ми извън това
е напълно безсмислена за когото и да било
за приятелите за случайните спътници в нощните влакове
за кръчмарските душеприказчици дори за оная
в чиито очи скришом надниквам
(докато сипва мляко в кафето си)
с надеждата да отгатна защо никога
не успях да се сбогувам истински с нея”
― Цочо Бояджиев, Книга на ирониите и опрощенията

“(студът свива телата но увеличава разстоянията) студено е казваш и дърветата са на привършване брадвата е съвсем затъпена в гората е тъмно и снегът е дълбок но дори да отидеш по следите ще те познаят това твое смешно желание да оставяш следи страхът ти от заличаването на спомена мъжкото ти честолюбие ненавистта към сезоните часовете и датите разбягващите се очерания на копнежите ти приятелствата с корабокрушенци в този свят на опитни мореплаватели необяснимата твоя пристрастност към синьото към всякакви там сини птици и сини рицари а на всичко отгоре и този нелеп навик на излизане да проверяваш изключен ли е котлонът изобщо къде ли съм си забутала блузата автобусът ми е утре в шест.”
― Цочо Бояджиев, Книга на ирониите и опрощенията

“Der Vorteil der Klugheit besteht darin, daß man sich dumm stellen kann. Das Gegenteil ist schon schwieriger.”
― Kurt Tucholsky

“Laß dir von keinem Fachmann imponieren, der dir erzählt: „Lieber Freund, das mache ich schon seit zwanzig Jahren so!“—Man kann eine Sache auch zwanzig Jahre lang falsch machen.”
― Kurt Tucholsky, Sprache ist eine Waffe: Sprachglossen