Zuberino > Zuberino's Quotes

“By the middle twentieth century, few European nation-states had not at one time or another figured themselves as 'the outpost of Western Christian civilisation': France, imperial Germany, the Habsburg Reich, Poland with its self-image as przedmurze (bastion), even tsarist Russia. Each of these nation-state myths identified "barbarism" as the condition or ethic of their immediate eastward neighbour: for the French, the Germans were barbarous, for the Germans it was the Slavs, for the Poles the Russians, for the Russians the Mongol and Turkic peoples of Central Asia and eventually the Chinese.”
― Neal Ascherson, Black Sea

“All human populations are in some sense immigrants. All hostility between different cultures in one place has an aspect of the classic immigrant grudge against the next boatload approaching the shore. To defend one’s home and fields and ancestral graves against invasion seems a right. But to claim unique possession – to compound the fact of settlement with the aspect of a landscape into an abstract of eternal and immutable ownership – is a joke.”
― Neal Ascherson, Black Sea

“History — the product, not the raw material — is a bottle with a label. For many years now, the emphasis of historical discussion has been laid upon the label (its iconography, its target-group of customers) and upon the interesting problems of manufacturing bottle-glass. The contents, on the other hand, are tasted in a knowing, perfunctory way and then spat out again. Only amateurs swallow them.”
― Neal Ascherson, Black Sea

“[The shock of finding a familiar word in an unfamiliar setting.] A SS man would examine us. Whenever he found a weak one, a musulman as we called them, he would write his number down: good for the crematory.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“...when the years have all passed, there will gape the uncomfortable and unpredictable dark void of death, and into this I shall at last fall headlong, down and down and down, and the prospect of that fall, that uprooting, that rending apart of body and spirit, that taking off into so blank an unknown, drowns me in mortal fear and mortal grief. After all, life, for all its agonies of despair and loss and guilt, is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing, full of liking and of love, at times a poem and a high adventure, at times noble and at times very gay; and whatever (if anything) is to come after it, we shall not have this life again.”
― Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond

“You'll see why a person would want to live there forever. Dawn, morning, mid-day, night: all the same, except for the changes in the air. The air changes the color of things there. And life whirs by as quiet as a murmur...the pure murmuring of life.”
― Juan Rulfo

“On the hinder slope of the hill two little goatherds are tending a flock of goats; one of them is sitting on a rock whittling a crook out of ash, while the other is trying to coax a few tweets out of a reed flute.”
― Camilo José Cela, Journey to the Alcarria: Travels through the Spanish Countryside

“Try to imagine, Robert says, what it feels like when they release the bulls. The noise is incredible. Your whole body's shaking. It's like your heart's racing but standing still at the same time. And then, when the people around you start moving and you know the bulls are coming, it just gets worse and worse. You hear the bulls coming closer. You feel the ground shaking beneath your feet. And when you see that first bull and it's time to run, everyone starts screaming. You can't even think. All you can do is run as fast as your legs will carry you.”
― Jan van Mersbergen, Tomorrow Pamplona

“This was during a period in my reading life when I was given to understand that "relating" to the fictional characters or situation was of prime importance, and so I read, I'm sorry to say, narrowly, frugally, unadventurously, as though I had no interest in the greater world and no desire to experience other cycles of thinking and being. This idea of "relating", or identifying, was encouraged by my teachers and even, I believe, by the critical theories of the day. Naive as it may sound, one read fiction in order to confirm the reality of one's experience.”
― Carol Shields

“The street sprinkler went past and, as its rasping rotary broom spread water over the tarmac, half the pavement looked as if it had been painted with a dark stain. A big yellow dog had mounted a tiny white bitch who stood quite still.

In the fashion of colonials the old gentleman wore a light jacket, almost white, and a straw hat.

Everything held its position in space as if prepared for an apotheosis. In the sky the towers of Notre-Dame gathered about themselves a nimbus of heat, and the sparrows – minor actors almost invisible from the street – made themselves at home high up among the gargoyles. A string of barges drawn by a tug with a white and red pennant had crossed the breadth of Paris and the tug lowered its funnel, either in salute or to pass under the Pont Saint-Louis.

Sunlight poured down rich and luxuriant, fluid and gilded as oil, picking out highlights on the Seine, on the pavement dampened by the sprinkler, on a dormer window, and on a tile roof on the Île Saint-Louis. A mute, overbrimming life flowed from each inanimate thing, shadows were violet as in impressionist canvases, taxis redder on the white bridge, buses greener.

A faint breeze set the leaves of a chestnut tree trembling, and all down the length of the quai there rose a palpitation which drew voluptuously nearer and nearer to become a refreshing breath fluttering the engravings pinned to the booksellers’ stalls.

People had come from far away, from the four corners of the earth, to live that one moment. Sightseeing cars were lined up on the parvis of Notre-Dame, and an agitated little man was talking through a megaphone.

Nearer to the old gentleman, to the bookseller dressed in black, an American student contemplated the universe through the view-finder of his Leica.

Paris was immense and calm, almost silent, with her sheaves of light, her expanses of shadow in just the right places, her sounds which penetrated the silence at just the right moment.

The old gentleman with the light-coloured jacket had opened a portfolio filled with coloured prints and, the better to look at them, propped up the portfolio on the stone parapet.

The American student wore a red checked shirt and was coatless.

The bookseller on her folding chair moved her lips without looking at her customer, to whom she was speaking in a tireless stream. That was all doubtless part of the symphony. She was knitting. Red wool slipped through her fingers.

The white bitch’s spine sagged beneath the weight of the big male, whose tongue was hanging out.

And then when everything was in its place, when the perfection of that particular morning reached an almost frightening point, the old gentleman died without saying a word, without a cry, without a contortion while he was looking at his coloured prints, listening to the voice of the bookseller as it ran on and on, to the cheeping of the sparrows, the occasional horns of taxis.

He must have died standing up, one elbow on the stone ledge, a total lack of astonishment in his blue eyes. He swayed and fell to the pavement, dragging along with him the portfolio with all its prints scattered about him.

The male dog wasn’t at all frightened, never stopped. The woman let her ball of wool fall from her lap and stood up suddenly, crying out:

‘Monsieur Bouvet!”
― Georges Simenon

“The sun finally died in beauty, flinging out its crimson flames, which cast their reflection on the faces of passers-by, giving them a strangely feverish look. The darkness of the trees became deeper. You could hear the Seine flowing. Sounds carried farther, and people in their beds could feel, as they did every night, the vibration of the ground as buses rolled past.”
― Georges Simenon, L'Enterrement de Monsieur Bouvet

“At five-thirty the rain began to fall in great, heavy drops which bounced off the pavement before they spread out into black spots. At the same time thunder rumbled from the direction of Charenton and an eddy of wind lifted the dust, carried away the hats of passers-by who took to their heels and who, after a few confused moments, were all in the shelter of doorways or under the awnings of cafe terraces.

Street pedlars of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine scurried about with an apron or a sack over their heads, pushing their carts as they tried to run. Rivulets already began to flow along the two sides of the street, the gutters sang, and on every floor you could see people hurriedly closing their windows.”
― Georges Simenon, L'Enterrement de Monsieur Bouvet

“The only institution in the Sicilian conscience that really counts is the family; counts, that is to say, more as a dramatic juridical contract or bond than as a natural association based on affection. The family is the Sicilians’ State. The State, as it is for us, is extraneous to them, merely a de facto entity based on force; an entity imposing taxes, military service, war, police. Within the family institution the Sicilian can cross the frontier of his own natural tragic solitude and fit into a communal life where relationships are governed by hair-splitting contractual ties. To ask him to cross the frontier between family and State would be too much. In imagination he may be carried away by the idea of the State and may even rise to being Prime Minister; but the precise and definite code of his rights and duties will remain within the family, whence the step towards victorious solitude is shorter.”
― Leonardo Sciascia, The Day of the Owl

“Fiction was invented the day Jonah arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale..”
― Gabriel García Márquez

“I am told that César Aira writes two books a year, at least, some of which are published by a little Argentinean company named Beatriz Viterbo, after the character in Borges's story "The Aleph." The books of his that I have been able to find were published by Mondadori and and Tusquets Argentina. It's frustrating, because once you've started reading Aira, you don't want to stop. His novels seem to put the theories of Gombrowicz into practice, except, and the difference is fundamental, that Gombrowicz was the abbot of a luxurious imaginary monastery, while Aira is a nun or novice among the Discalced Carmelites of the Word. Sometimes he is reminiscent of Roussel (Roussel on his knees in a bath red with blood), but the only living writer to whom he can be compared is Barcelona's Enrique Vila-Matas.

Aira is an eccentric, but he is also one of the three or four best writers working in Spanish today.”
― Roberto Bolaño, Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles, and Speeches, 1998-2003

“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

“The telephone could ring twice, Vito knew he was not going to pick it up. He would put on his leg before his trousers as he did every day on first getting up - at all events nothing good would ever again come by phone, and any way, no matter what, his leg came first.”
― Jean Echenoz, Chopin's Move

“..he went to the kitchen to get a banana; after each mouthful he pulled back a fraction the four or five strips of striped skin, faded petals, which covered his fist as it clenched the base of the fruit; carefully he detached the friable, cardboard-flavoured filaments that run down its surface like meridian lines, in a word peeling his banana the way the anthropoid will forever peel his. He threw one of the filaments into the fly cage..”
― Jean Echenoz, Chopin's Move

“The punctilious magistrate, presiding in his bivouac of matting, vanished without punctilio.”
― Richard Hughes, In Hazard

“It had a fellar call Five Past Twelve. A test look at him and say, 'Boy, you black like midnight.' Then the test take a second look and say, 'No, you more like Five Past Twelve.”
― Samuel Selvon, The Lonely Londoners

“So, cool as a lord, the old Galahad walking out to the road, with plastic raincoat hanging on the arm, and the eyes not missing one sharp craft that pass, bowing his head in a polite 'Good evening' and not giving a blast if they answer or not. This is London, this is life oh lord, to walk like a king with money in your pocket, not a worry in the world.”
― Samuel Selvon, The Lonely Londoners

“Is one of those summer evenings, when it look like night would never come, a magnificent evening, a powerful evening, rent finish paying, rations in the cupboard, twenty pounds in the bank, and a nice piece of skin waiting under the big clock in Piccadilly Tube Station. The sky blue, sun shining, the girls ain't have on no coats to hide the legs.

"Mummy, look at that black man!" A little child, holding on to the mother hand, look up at Sir Galahad.

"You mustn't say that, dear!" The mother chide the child.”
― Samuel Selvon, The Lonely Londoners

“Always, from the first time he went there to see Eros and the lights, that circus have a magnet for him, that circus represent life, that circus is the beginning and the ending of the world. Every time he go there, he have the same feeling like when he see it the first night, drink coca-cola, any time is guinness time, bovril and the fireworks, a million flashing lights, gay laughter, the wide doors of theatres, the huge posters, everready batteries, rich people going into tall hotels, people going to the theatre, people sitting and standing and walking and talking and laughing and buses and cars and Galahad Esquire, in all this, standing there in the big city, in London. Oh Lord.”
― Samuel Selvon, The Lonely Londoners

“[Aftermath of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881]

What happened to the conspirators - Zhelyabov already in prison, Perovskaya, Kibalchich and the three surviving bombers - is that they were all hanged. This last public execution to be staged in Russia took place before a crowd of some 80,000. It was the youngest of the conspirators, eighteen-year-old Rysakov, who broke down in prison, confessed, begged for mercy, exposed as many of his comrades as he could. It did not save him from the scaffold. And on the scaffold the others coldly turned away from him, exchanging last words among themselves, leaving Rysakov to die quite alone. It was the execution of the Decembrists all over again, except that one of the hanged was a woman. There was no proper drop, only stools to be kicked away, and the stools were too low for a quick kill. Worst of all, Mikhailov's noose slipped, not once, but twice. He was heavier than the executioner, who was drunk, had bargained for. He had to be lifted up and rehanged. All took some minutes to die. Russia still had not learnt even how to hang.”
― Edward Crankshaw, The Shadow of the Winter Palace: Russia's Drift to Revolution 1825-1917

“How do you expect to communicate with the ocean, when you can’t even understand one another?”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

“It wasn't all misery. On one of our halts we lay spreadeagled on the ice and stared up at a sky blazing with the glory of the most wonderful aurora I'd ever witnessed. I groaned beneath the splendour of those silken curtains, yellow, green, and orange, billowing at the window of the heavens.”
― Beryl Bainbridge, The Birthday Boys

“Coitus is random, children are definite.”
― Thomas Keneally, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith

“I didn't hit her, man, what happened was that Maria was obsessed with the Marquis de Sade and wanted to try the spanking thing," said Luscious Skin.
"That's very Maria," said Pancho. "She takes her reading seriously.”
― Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives

“I've been cordially invited to join the visceral realists. I accepted, of course. There was no initiation ceremony. It was better that way.”
― Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives

“Does his family have money?" I asked.

"No, Ulises's family doesn't have money," said Requena. "Actually, the only family he has is his mother, right? Or at least I've never heard of anyone else."

"I know his whole family," said Pancho. "I knew Ulises Lima long before any of you, long before Belano, and his mother is the only family he has. He's broke, that I can promise you."

"Then how could he finance two issues of a magazine?"

"Selling weed," said Pancho. The other two were quiet, but they didn't deny it.

"I can't believe it," I said.

"Well, it's true. The money comes from marijuana."

"Shit."

"He goes and gets it in Acapulco and then he delivers it to his clients in Mexico City."

"Shut up, Pancho," said Barrios.

"Why should I shut up? The kid's a fucking visceral realist, isn't he? So why do I have to shut up?”
― Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives