Eric Camellini > Eric's Quotes

“To condense fact from the vapor of nuance.”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“A knife is neither true nor false, but anyone impaled on its blade is in error.”
― Rene Daumal, Mount Analogue

“Yes, Eleanor loathed herself and yet required praise, which she then never believed.”
― Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia

“What a strange business this acting is, Pyke said; you are trying to convince people that you're someone else, that this is not-me. The way to do it is this, he said: when in character, playing not-me, you have to be yourself. To make your not-self real you have to steal from your authentic self. A false stroke, a wrong note, anything pretended, and to the audience you are as obvious as a Catholic naked in a mosque. The closer you play to yourself the better. Paradox of paradoxes: to be someone else successfully you must be yourself! This I learned!”
― Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia

“Tacere e struggersi è il castigo più grande che ci possiamo infliggere. A che è servito a me l'orgoglio e non guardarti e farti stare sveglia notte dopo notte? A niente! È servito a buttarmi il fuoco addosso! Perché tu credi che il tempo guarisca e che i muri proteggano, e non è vero, non è vero. Quando le cose arrivano tanto in fondo, non c'è modo di sradicarle!”
― Federico García Lorca, Bodas de sangre

“Prima tuo padre, che odorava di garofano e non me lo sono goduta neanche tre anni. Poi tuo fratello. E ti pare giusto, è mai possibile che una cosa piccola come una pistola o un coltello possa finire un uomo che è un toro? Non smetterei mai di parlarne. Passano i mesi e la disperazione mi brucia gli occhi e su su fino alla punta dei capelli.”
― Federico García Lorca, Bodas de sangre

“Illumina il panciotto e slaccia i bottoni, che poi i coltelli conoscono la strada.”
― Federico García Lorca, Bodas de sangre

“Perché mi guardi così? Hai una spina in ogni occhio.”
― Federico García Lorca, Bodas de sangre

“To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.”
― Federico García Lorca, Blood Wedding and Yerma

“People who were only ever half right about things drove me mad. I hated the flood of opinion, the certainty, the easy talk about Cuba and Russia and the economy, because beneath the hard structure of words was an abyss of ignorance and not-knowing; and, in a sense, of not wanting to know.”
― Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia

“And so I sat in the centre of this old city that I loved, which itself sat at the bottom of a tiny island. I was surrounded by people I loved, and I felt happy and miserable at the same time. I thought of what a mess everything had been, but that it wouldn't always be this way.”
― Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia

“Maybe you never stop feeling like an eight-year-old in front of your parents. You resolve to be your mature self, to react in this considered way rather than that elemental way, to breathe evenly from the bottom of your stomach and to see your parents as equals, but within five minutes your intentions are blown to hell, and you're babbling and screaming in rage like an angry child.”
― Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia

“I began to enjoy my own generosity; I felt the pleasure of pleasing others, especially as this was accompanied by money-power. I was paying for them; they were grateful, they had to be; and they could no longer see me as a failure.”
― Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia

“I admired him more than anyone but I didn't wish him well. It was that I preferred him to me and wanted to be him. I coveted his talents, face, style. I wanted to wake up with them all transferred to me.”
― Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia

“I didn't want to be educated. It wasn't the right time of my life for concentration, it really wasn't. The spirit of the age among the people I knew manifested itself as general drift and idleness. We didn't want money. What for? We could get by, living off parents, friends or the State And if we were going to be bored, and we were usually bored, rarely being self-motivated, we could at least be bored on our own terms, lying smashed on mattresses in ruined houses rather than working in the machine. I didn't want to work in a place where I couldn't wear my fur coat.”
― Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia

“Watching Jamila sometimes made me think the world was divided into three sorts of people: those who knew what they wanted to do; those (the unhappiest) who never knew what their purpose in life was; and those who found out later on. I was in the last category, I reckoned, which didn't stop me wishing I'd been born into the first.”
― Hanif Kureishi , The Buddha of Suburbia

“However angry I was with him, however much I wanted to humiliate Terry, I suddenly saw such humanity in his eyes, and in the way he tried to smile - such innocence in the way he wanted to understand me, and such possibility of pain, along with the implicit assumption that he wouldn't be harmed - that I pulled away.”
― Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia

“One day we are children, our faces are bright and open. We want to know how machines work. We are in love with polar bears. The next day we're throwing ourselves down the stairs, drunk and weeping. Our lives are over. We hate life and we hate death.”
― Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia

“I believe happiness is only possible if you follow your feeling, your intuition, your real desires. Only unhappiness is gained by acting in accordance with duty, or obligation, or guilt, of the desire to please others. You must accept happiness when you can, not selfishly, but remembering you are a part of the world, of others, not separate from them. Should people pursue their own happiness at the expense of others? Or should they be unhappy so others can be happy? There's no one who hasn't had to confront this problem.”
― Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia

“A me piace veder correre pieno di fuoco ciò che era stato quieto per anni e anni.”
― Federico García Lorca, La casa de Bernarda Alba

“Ho cercato di fermare gli eventi, ma ormai mi fanno troppa paura. Senti questo silenzio? Ebbene, c'è una tempesta in ogni camera. Il giorno che scoppieranno, saremo tutte travolte.”
― Federico García Lorca, La casa de Bernarda Alba

“Dio deve avermi lasciata sola nelle tenebre, perché ti vedo come se non ti avessi mai vista.”
― Federico García Lorca, La casa de Bernarda Alba

“Ti dirò la sola cosa che ho imparato nella vita: la gente non fa altro che chiudersi in casa a fare le cose che ama di meno.”
― Federico García Lorca, Yerma

“Non tutto. Vi son cose che restano rinchiuse dentro i muri e non possono cambiare perché nessuno le sente.”
― Federico García Lorca, Yerma

“In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.

On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“Ecco la mirabile stupidità del mondo: quando le nostre fortune decadono - spesso per gli eccessi del nostro stesso comportamento - rendiamo colpevoli dei nostri disastri il sole, la luna e le stelle, come se fossimo delinquenti per necessità, sciocchi per coercizione celeste, furfanti, ladri e traditori per il movimento delle sfere, ubriaconi, bugiardi e adulteri per obbedienza forzata all'influsso dei pianeti - e tutto il male che facciamo è dovuto all'imperativo divino. Magnifica trovata dell'uomo puttaniere, quella di mettere i suoi istinti da caprone a carico d'una stella.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

“This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeits of our own behavior) we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon's tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear