Ness > Ness's Quotes

“But in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I'm saying? Does it also feel this way to you?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro

“Anything worth doing transcends borders.”
― Geetanjali Shree, Tomb of Sand

“Once you’ve got women and a border, a story can write itself. Even women on their own are enough. Women are stories in themselves, full of stirrings and whisperings that float on the wind, that bend with each blade of grass.”
― Geetanjali Shree, Tomb of Sand

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I used to think there was such a thing as emptiness, that there were places in the world one could go and be alone. This, I think, is still true, but the error in my reasoning was to assume that alone was somewhere you could go, rather than somewhere you had to be left.”
― Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

“Aveva parlato, per anni, di uccidersi. Nessuno gli credette mai. Quando veniva da me e da Leone mangiando ciliegie, e i tedeschi prendevano la Francia, già allora ne parlava. Non per la Francia, non per i tedeschi, non per la guerra che stava investendo l’Italia. Della guerra aveva paura, ma non abbastanza per uccidersi a motivo della guerra. Continuò tuttavia ad avere paura della guerra, anche dopo che la guerra era da tempo finita: come, del resto, tutti noi. Perché questo ci accadde, che appena finita la guerra ricominciammo subito ad aver paura di una nuova guerra, e a pensarci sempre. E lui temeva una nuova guerra più di tutti noi. E in lui la paura era più grande che in noi: era in lui, la paura, il vortice dell’imprevisto e dell’inconoscibile, che sembrava orrendo alla lucidità del suo pensiero; acque buie, vorticose e venefiche sulle rive spoglie della sua vita.”
― Natalia Ginzburg, Lessico famigliare

“I slipped into art to escape life. I sneaked off into literature.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“Anche le notti più felici passano senza consolarci. Aspettiamo, aspettiamo. E intanto la luna ha compiuto un lungo arco nel cielo. Le sue ombre di minuto in minuto diventano più lunghe. I conigli, con le orecchie tese, lasciano sull'erba illuminata mostruose strisce nere. Anche noi, nella notte, in mezzo alla campagna, non siamo più che ombre, fantasmi scuri con dentro l'invisibile carico di affanni. Dove è tesa la tagliola? Al lume favoloso della luna cantano i grilli.”
― Dino Buzzati, La boutique del mistero

“Ma tu - adesso ci penso - sei troppo lontana, centinaia e centinaia di chilometri difficili a valicare. Tu sei dentro a una vita che ignoro, e gli altri uomini ti sono accanto, a cui probabilmente sorridi, come a me nei tempi passati. Ed è bastato poco tempo perché ti dimenticassi di me. Probabilmente non riesci più a ricordare il mio nome. Io sono ormai uscito da te, confuso fra le innumerevoli ombre. Eppure non so pensare che a te, e mi piace dirti queste cose.”
― Dino Buzzati, La boutique del mistero

“Vorrei con te passeggiare, un giorno di primavera, col cielo di color grigio e ancora qualche vecchia foglia dell'anno prima trascinata per le strade dal vento, nei quartieri della periferia; e che fosse domenica. In tali contrade sorgono spesso pensieri malinconici e grandi, e in date ore vaga la poesia congiungendo i cuori di quelli che si vogliono bene.
Nascono inoltre speranze che non si sanno dire, favorite dagli orizzonti sterminati dietro le case, dai treni fuggenti, dalle nuvole del settentrione. Ci terremo semplicemente per mano e andremo con passo leggero, dicendo cose insensate, stupide e care. Fino a che si accenderanno i lampioni e dai casamenti squallidi usciranno le storie sinistre delle città, le avventure, i vagheggiati romanzi. E allora noi taceremo, sempre tenendoci per mano, poiché le anime si parleranno senza parola.”
― Dino Buzzati, La boutique del mistero

“Oh, sleep. Nothing else could ever bring me such pleasure, such freedom, the power to feel and move and think and imagine, safe from the miseries of my waking consciousness.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

“(...) the so-called democratization of reviews means the lowering of standards, and that subject knowledge, history and critical context are at risk of being lost in favour of people who only know how to write in attention-seeking soundbites.”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“Every journey conceals another journey within its lines: the path not taken and the forgotten angle.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry

“but whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“Après leur dernier échange, il était parti lentement. Sans faire de bruit. Aussi discret qu'un point-virgule dans un roman de huit cents pages.”
― David Foenkinos, La délicatesse

“Pourquoi sommes-nous autant marqués par un détail, un geste, qui font de ces instants minimes le coeur d'une époque?”
― David Foenkinos, Delicacy

“I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye. I like to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove. Sometimes, in my mind, I followed them to their apartments on the corners of hidden streets, and they turned and smiled back at me before they faded through a door into warm darkness. At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others—poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner—young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“The feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She had never lived. Even as a child, as far back as she could remember, she had done nothing but endure. She had believed in her own inherent goodness, her humanity, and lived accordingly, never causing anyone harm. Her devotion to doing things the right way had been unflagging, all her successes had depended on it, and she would have gone on like that indefinitely. She didn't understand why, but faced with those decaying buildings and straggling grasses, she was nothing but a child who had never lived.”
― Han Kang, The Vegetarian

“Tudo no mundo começou com um sim. Uma molécula disse sim a outra molécula e nasceu a vida. Mas antes da pré-história havia a pré-história da pré-história e havia o nunca e havia o sim. Sempre houve. Não sei o quê, mas sei o que o universo jamais começou.”
― Clarice Lispector

“I'm sick to death of this particular self. I want another.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“Palabras. No hay manera de quitárselas de encima. No le dejan a una estar verdaderamente sola. Plaga de bichos molestos, oye. Debería abrir las ventanas de par en par para que salgan a la calle las palabras, los lamentos, las viejas conversaciones tristes atrapadas entre los tabiques del piso deshabitado.”
― Fernando Aramburu, Patria

“There is none more conformist than one who flaunts his individuality.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“Most of us believe we are who we are because of the decisions we've made, because of events that shaped us, because of the choices of those around us. We rarely consider that we're also formed by the decisions we didn't make, by events that could have happened but didn't or by our lack of choices, for that matter.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“eu não sabia se daria conta daquele corpo que nunca havia sido tão meu e ao mesmo tempo tão pouco meu. Quero devolver, quero trocar. Este corpo agora é outro.”
― Tatiana Salem Levy, Vista chinesa

“é linda, olhem esse corpo, nem parece que foi dilacerado, partido, fragmentado, nem parece que um dia essa mulher esteve em frangalhos, ninguém vê o que estou pensando, ninguém sabe que estou ficando louca ou talvez já tenha ficado, ou talvez eles saibam e eu não saiba que eles sabem, não, eles não sabem, ninguém sabe, nem eu sei ao certo, é tão difícil saber, eu me recompus, eu não me recompus, eu estou quase me recompondo, eu nunca vou me recompor, eu continuo em pedaços, eu enlouqueci, eu estou enlouquecendo,”
― Tatiana Salem Levy, Vista chinesa

“Every life has its kernel, its hub, its epicentre, from which everything flows out, to which everything returns.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet

“She grows up feeling wrong, out of place, too dark, too tall, too unruly, too opinionated, too silent, too strange. She grows up with the awareness that she is merely tolerated, an irritant useless, that she does not deserve love, that she will need to change herself substantially, crush herself down if she is to be married. She grows up, too, with the memory of what it meant to be properly loved, for what you are, not what you ought to be.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet

“Gardens don’t stand still: they are always in flux.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet

“And as these words come, one after another, it is possible for him to slip away from himself and find a peace so absorbing, so soothing, so private, so joyous that nothing else will do.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet

“Ahí va la pobre, a romperse en él. Lo mismo que se rompe una ola en las rocas. Un poco de espuma y adiós.”
― Fernando Aramburu, Patria