Elena > Elena's Quotes

“For the first time in my life I had actually realised that I, too, would leave this world and everything I loved one day. It was a terrible thought. It was an unbearable thought.”
― Jostein Gaarder, The Orange Girl

“I believe I've used the world 'riddle' many times in this letter. Attempting to understand the universe is perhaps comparable to doing a great jigsaw puzzle. Although possibly it's as much a mental or intellectual riddle, and we may have the answer to it within us. We are here, after all. We are the universe.”
― Jostein Gaarder, The Orange Girl

“If everyone drowned in letters from dead fathers and forefathers, they would never be able to live their own lives.”
― Jostein Gaarder, The Orange Girl

“Но ако човек не е устроен така, че пред най-голямата заплаха да набира смелост и да успява да надвие несигурността с последната жива клетка от тялото си, в която е скътал надежда, този свят отдавна да бе останал само със сушата, морето и рибите. А ако човек винаги се опитва да чертае ясен план за това, което предстои, никой никога нямаше да направи първата крачка за каквото и да било. Защото смелостта не е да поемеш към ясната трудност, а да се впуснеш там, където е съвсем тъмно, дълбоко и непознато. Без да е подправена с лудост, смелостта бързо се превръща в страх.”
― Виктория Бешлийска, Глина

“In the end, writing arises when man realizes that memory is not enough.”
― Georgi Gospodinov, Time Shelter

“Happy countries are all alike; each unhappy country is unhappy in its own way, as has been written.”
― Georgi Gospodinov, Time Shelter

“Forgetting takes a lot of work. You have to constantly remember that you are supposed to forget something. Surely, that's how every ideology functions.”
― Georgi Gospodinov, Time Shelter

“You can't make a museum to preserve something that has never left.”
― Georgi Gospodinov, Time Shelter

“It's well known that our inept homegrown police of all eras have always shown unerring taste in poets and writers - they always manage to kill the most talented and leave the most mediocre.”
― Georgi Gospodinov, Time Shelter

“Soon after that we would go our separate ways, grow cold, forget one another, the rebels would grow tame as teaching assistants in the universities, the sworn bachelors and party animals would be pushing baby carriages and zoning out in front of their TV, the hippies would get regular haircuts at the local barbershop.”
― Georgi Gospodinov, Time Shelter

“Your grandmother had an icon, your mother had a little portrait of Lenin, and you have your TV.”
― Georgi Gospodinov, Time Shelter

“Now the last person who remembered me as a child is gone, I told myself. And only then did I burst into sobs, like a child.”
― Georgi Gospodinov, Time Shelter

“Outside Bulgaria's borders people age more beautifully and more slowly, old age is more merciful elsewhere.”
― Georgi Gospodinov, Time Shelter

“If no one remembers becomes the equivalent of If there is no God. If there is no God, Dostoyevsky said, then everything is permitted.”
― Georgi Gospodinov, Time Shelter

“Always it was the same, Furlong thought; always they carried mechanically on without pause, to the next job at hand. What would life be like, he wondered, if they were given time to think and reflect over things? Might their lives be different or much the same – or would they just lose the run of themselves?”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.”
― Hafiz of Shiraz