Imma Hilly

“The principal and the most common problem at the beginning of any fairly conventional marriage is that regardless of the facilities for disengagement available to the contracting parties, you traditionally experience an unpleasant sense of having arrived and, therefore, of having reached and end, or rather, that the time has come to devote yourself to something else. I know that this feeling is both pernicious and erroneous and that giving in to it or accepting it is the reason why so many promising marriages collapse no sooner have they begun. I know that what you should do is to overcome that initial feeling and , far from devoting yourself to something else, you should devote yourself to the marriage itself, as if confronted by the most important structure and task of your life, even if you're tempted to believe that the task has already been completed and the structure built.”
― Javier Marías, A Heart So White

“They had to pretend because our high-ranking politician knew not a word of English (well, when he said goodbye he did risk a “Good luck”) and the high-ranking British politician knew not a word of Spanish (although she did say “Buen dίa” to me as she gave me an iron handshake). So while the former was mumbling gibberish in Spanish, inaudible to cameras and photographers, all the time keeping a broad smile trained on his guest, as if he were regaling her with interesting banter (what he said was not, however, inaudible to me: I seem to remember that he kept repeating “One, two, three, four, five, what a lovely time we’re going to have”). The latter was muttering nonsense in her own language, and smiling even more broadly than him (“Cheese,” she kept saying, which is what all English people being photographed are told to say, and then various untranslatable onomatopoeic words such as “Tweedle tweedle, biddle diddle, twit and fiddle, tweedle twang”).”
― Javier Marias, A Heart So White

“In ancient times,' Quichotte said, in a last appeal to reason, 'when a woman was accused of witchcraft, the proofs were that she had a "familiar", usually a cat, plus a broomstick and a third nipple for the Devil to suck on. But almost all homes had cats and brooms and in those days many people's bodies had warts. Thus the mere accusation, witch!, was all that was required. The proof was in every home and on every woman's body and therefore all women so accused were automatically guilty.”
― Salman Rushdie, Quichotte

“The truth is that bilingual babies are like machines.”
― Albert Costa, The Bilingual Brain: And What It Tells Us about the Science of Language