cardulelia carduelis

“Patri wondered if she wasn't herself (and this was the secret of all her thought) a woman in disguise, brilliantly disguised.. as a woman.”
― César Aira, Ghosts

“At this I am good, for I am a mover of betweens. I slip amongst classifications like water in cupped palms, leaving bits of myself behind. I am quick and deft, for there is no greater fear than the fear of being caught wanting to belong. I am a chameleon. And the best chameleon has no center, no truer sense of self than what he is in an instant.”
― Andrew X. Pham, Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam

“The same thing happens in literature: in the composition of some works, the author becomes a whole society, by means of a kind of symbolic condensation, writing with the real or virtual collaboration of all the culture's specialists, while others works are made by an individual, working alone like the nomadic woman, in which case society is signified by the arrangement of the writer's books in relation to the books of others, their periodic appearance, and so on.”
― César Aira, Ghosts

“But in some ways parties were serious and important too, she thought. They were a way of suspending life, all the serious business of life, in order to do something unimportant: and wasn't that an important thing to do?”
― César Aira, Ghosts