David Vásquez Muriel

“Una ruina es un objeto estético accidental. El embellecimiento, indudable, no es voluntario. No se fabrican las ruinas, no se las fomenta. La ruina tiende al derrumbe y el amontonamiento. Lo más hermoso es lo que se mantiene erguido a pesar de la devastación. Tu recuerdo es ese punto en lo alto y tu cuerpo ese punto en lo bajo. Tu fantasma sigue de pie en mi memoria, mientras que tu esqueleto se descompone en la tierra.”
― Édouard Levé, Suicidio

“I remembered how my father had once told me that on earth there were men called astronomers whose task it was to keep track of his rising and setting. They were held in highest esteem among mortals, kept in palaces as counselors of kings, but sometimes my father lingered over one thing or another and threw their calculations into despair. Then those astronomers were hauled before the kings they served and killed as frauds. My father had smiled when he told me. It was what they deserved, he said. Helios the Sun was bound to no will but his own, and none might say what he would do. “Father,” I said that day, “are we late enough to kill astronomers?” “We are,” he answered, shaking the jingling reins. The horses surged forward, and the world blurred beneath us, the shadows of night smoking from the sea’s edge. I did not look. There was a twisting feeling in my chest, like cloth being wrung dry. I was thinking of those astronomers. I imagined them, low as worms, sagging and bent. Please, they cried, on bony knees, it wasn’t our fault, the sun itself was late. The sun is never late, the kings answered from their thrones. It is blasphemy to say so, you must die! And so the axes fell and chopped those pleading men in two.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“En las primeras ceremonias fúnebres a las que uno asiste se sitúa en el último banco, y sale incluso a fumar un cigarrillo si la cosa se alarga demasiado. Pero a medida que los años transcurren vamos avanzando banco a banco en dirección al muerto hasta ocupar su sitio.”
― Juan José Millás, Cuentos de adúlteros desorientados