Desislava Kyurkchieva > Desislava's Quotes

“How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known?”
― Orhan Pamuk, Snow

“Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“Any intelligent person knows that life is a beautiful thing and that the purpose of life is to be happy," said my father as he watched the three beauties. "But it seems only idiots are ever happy. How can we explain this?”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“The beauty and mystery of this world only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion . . . open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colors, details and irony.”
― Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red

“Being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends, and where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Tereza knew what happens during the moment love is born: the woman cannot resist the voice calling forth her terrified soul; the man cannot resist the woman whose soul thus responds to his voice.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth.”
― Marcel Proust, Time Regained

“Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”
― Marcel Proust

“Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.”
― Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

“The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.”
― Marcel Proust

“If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less, but to dream more, to dream all the time.”
― Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past Volumes 1-3 Box Set

“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings

“Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“If I could live again my life,
In the next - I'll try,
- to make more mistakes,
I won't try to be so perfect,
I'll be more relaxed...
I'll take fewer things seriously..
I'll take more risks,
I'll take more trips,
I'll watch more sunsets,
I'll climb more mountains,
I'll swim more rivers,
I'll go to more places I've never been
I'll eat more ice ...I'll have more real problems and less imaginary ones

If I could live again - I will travel light
If I could live again - I'll try to work bare feet at the beginning of spring till the end of autumn,
I'll watch more sunrises ...If I have the life to live”
― Anonymous

“To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me...”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph and Other Stories

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.”
― Franz Kafka

“Relearn astonishment.”
― Elias Canetti

“We sit in the mud, my friend, and reach for the stars.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“As we all know, time sometimes flies like a bird, and sometimes
crawls like a worm, but people may be unusually happy when they do not
even notice whether time has passed quickly or slowly”
― Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“Nature cares nothing for logic, our human logic: she has her own, which we do not recognize and do not acknowledge until we are crushed under its wheel.”
― Ivan Turgenev

“A poet must be a psychologist, but a secret one: he should know and feel the roots of phenomena but present only the phenomena themselves in full bloom or as they fade away. ”
― Ivan Turgenev

“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”
― Fitzgerald F. Scott, The Great Gatsby

“I have named you queen.
There are taller than you, taller.
There are purer than you, purer.
There are lovelier than you, lovelier.
But you are the queen.

When you go through the streets
No one recognizes you.
No one sees your crystal crown, no one looks
At the carpet of red gold
That you tread as you pass,
The nonexistent carpet.

And when you appear
All the rivers sound
In my body, bells
Shake the sky,
And a hymn fills the world.

Only you and I,
Only you and I, my love,
Listen to it.”
― Pablo Neruda, Love Poems

“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel