Venus

“Qué necesario será, amigo mío, que sufras con minucia de la profundidad de cada cosa, de su repercusión, de su perspectiva… Qué triunfo si triunfas, si restituyes, solidificado en palabras, ese doble que se entrevé detrás de la vida. Imagino que al leerte uno tendrá un escalofrío –al sentir que algo tan oscuro se ha vuelto tan inmediatamente presente, tan urgente… ¿Por qué no habría de existir ese paisaje que yo discierno, que yo siento detrás de toda apariencia? ¿Por qué habría de ser menos real?”
― Victoria Ocampo, Victoria Ocampo Virginia Woolf Correspondencia

“The real hell of Hell is that it is forever." Sula said that. She said doing anything forever and ever was hell. Nel didn't understand it then, but now in the bathroom, trying to feel, she thought, "If I could be sure that I could stay here in this small white room with the dirty tile and water gurgling in the pipes and my head on the cool rim of this bathtub and never have to go out the door, I would be happy. If I could be certain that I never had to get up and flush the toilet, go in the kitchen, watch my children grow up and die, see my food chewed on my plate... Sula was wrong. Hell ain't things lasting forever. Hell is change.”
― Toni Morrison, Sula

“I didn’t say to Otmar that there has to be love in a person’s life, that no one can do without either receiving it or giving it. I didn’t say that love, as much as a daughter and a girlfriend, had been taken away. I didn’t say that love expired for me on a Wall of Death.”
― William Trevor, Two Lives

“He wished to be within earshot when Aimée emerged from her sleep, since each time she did so she would find herself deeper in what seemed like a nightmare.
‘You comprehend, signora? Reversal of waking from bad dreams. For this child such dreams begin then.”
― William Trevor, Two Lives