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“Good or ill, life is life; you only realize that when you have to risk it.”
― The Black Obelisk
― The Black Obelisk
“I’ll tell you the story of the wave and the rock. It’s an old story. Older than we are. Listen. Once upon a time there was a wave who loved a rock in the sea, let us say in the Bay of Capri. The wave foamed and swirled around the rock, she kissed him day and night, she embraced him with her white arms, she sighed and wept and besought him to come to her. She loved him and stormed about him and in that way slowly undermined him, and one day he yielded, completely undermined, and sank into her arms.”
“And suddenly he was no longer a rock to be played with, to be loved, to be dreamed of. He was only a block of stone at the bottom of the sea, drowned in her. The wave felt disappointed and deceived and looked for another rock
“What does that mean? He should have remained a rock.”
“The wave always says that. But things that move are stronger than immovable things. Water is stronger than rocks.”
― Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country
“And suddenly he was no longer a rock to be played with, to be loved, to be dreamed of. He was only a block of stone at the bottom of the sea, drowned in her. The wave felt disappointed and deceived and looked for another rock
“What does that mean? He should have remained a rock.”
“The wave always says that. But things that move are stronger than immovable things. Water is stronger than rocks.”
― Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country
“Regret is the most useless thing in the world. One cannot recall anything. And one cannot rectify anything. Otherwise we would all be saints. Life did not intend to make us perfect. Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum.”
― Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country
― Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country
“Some day perhaps our time will be known as the age of irony. Not the witty irony of the eighteenth century, but the stupid or malignant irony of a crude age of technological progress and cultural regression.”
― The Night in Lisbon
― The Night in Lisbon
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