“If you should ask me where I've been all this time
I have to say "Things happen."
I have to dwell on stones darkening the earth,
on the river ruined in its own duration:
I know nothing save things the birds have lost,
the sea I left behind, or my sister crying.
Why this abundance of places? Why does day lock
with day? Why the dark night swilling round
in our mouths? And why the dead?”
― Pablo Neruda, quote from Residence on Earth
“Neither the heart cut by a sliver of glass in a wasteland of thorns, nor the atrocious waters seen in the corners of certain houses, waters like eyelids and eyes, could hold your waist in my hands when my heart lifts its oak trees toward your unbreakable thread of snow. Night sugar, spirit of crowns, redeemed human blood, your kisses banish me, and a surge of water with remnants of the sea strikes the silences that wait for you surrounding the worn-out chairs, wearing doors away.”
― Pablo Neruda, quote from Residence on Earth
“Do you not hear the constant victory,
in the human footrace
of time, slow as fire,
sure, and thick and Herculean
accumulating its volume and adding its sad fiber?”
― Pablo Neruda, quote from Residence on Earth
“Nights with bright pivots, departure, matter, uniquely voice, uniquely naked each day. Upon your breasts of still current, upon your legs ofharshness and water, upon the permanence and pride of your naked hair, I want to lie, my love, the tears now cast into the raucous basket where they gather, I want to lie, my love, alone with a syllable of destroyed silver, alone with a tip of your snowy breast. It is not now possible, at times, to win except by falling, it is not now possible, between two people, to tremble, to touch the river’s flower: man fibers come like needles, transactions, fragments, families of repulsive coral, tempests and hard passages through carpets of winter. Between lips and lips there are cities of great ash and moist crest, drops of when and how, indefinite traffic: between lips and lips, as if along a coast of sand and glass, the wind passes. That is why you are endless, gather me up as if you were all solemnity, all nocturnal like a zone, until you merge with the lines of time. Advance in sweetness, come to my side until the digital leaves of the violins have become silent, until the moss takes root in the thunder, until from the throbbing of hand and hand the roots come down.”
― Pablo Neruda, quote from Residence on Earth
“Nights with bright pivots, departure, matter, uniquely voice, uniquely naked each day. Upon your breasts of still current, upon your legs ofharshness and water, upon the permanence and pride of your naked hair, I want to lie, my love, the tears now cast into the raucous basket where they gather, I want to lie, my love, alone with a syllable of destroyed silver, alone with a tip of your snowy breast. It is not now possible, at times, to win except by falling, it is not now possible, between two people, to tremble, to touch the river’s flower: man fibers come like needles, transactions, fragments, families of repulsive coral, tempests and hard passages through carpets of winter. Between lips and lips there are cities of great ash and moist crest, drops of when and how, indefinite traffic: between lips and lips, as if along a coast of sand and glass, the wind passes. That is why you are endless, gather me up as if you were all solemnity, all nocturnal like a zone, until you merge with the lines of time. Advance in sweetness, come to my side until the digital leaves of the violins have become silent, until the moss takes root in the thunder, until from the throbbing of hand and hand the roots come down. VALS Yo toco el odio como pecho diurno, yo sin cesar, de ropa en ropa, vengo durmiendo lejos.”
― Pablo Neruda, quote from Residence on Earth
Pablo Neruda
Born place: in Parral, Chile
Born date July 12, 1904
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“Indeed, if I have yet to join the hosts of the suicides, it is because (fatigue apart) I find it no meaningfuller to drown myself than to go on swimming.”
― John Barth, quote from Lost in the Funhouse
“Soon I was spending all my time in the basement, and I had moved from taking things apart to putting new things together. I began by building simple devices. Some, like my radios, were useful. Others were merely entertaining. For example, I discovered I could solder some stiff wires onto a capacitor and charge it up. For a few minutes, until the charge leaked away, I had a crude stun gun.
...So I decided to try it on my little brother. I charged the capacitor to a snappy but nonlethal level from a power supply I'd recently removed from our old Zenith television.
'Hey, let's play Jab a Varmint,' I said. I tried to smile disarmingly, keeping the capacitor behind my back and making sure I didn't ruin the effect by jabbing myself or some other object.
'What's that?' he asked, suspiciously.
Before he could escape, I stepped across the room and jabbed him. He jumped. Pretty high, too. Sometimes he would fight back, but this time he ran. The jab was totally unexpected and he didn't realize that I only had the one jab in my capacitor. It would be several years before I had the skill to make a multishot Varmint Jabber.”
― John Elder Robison, quote from Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's
“Context is to data what water is to a dolphin”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Olympos
“You were my high school girlfriend. You put out at fifteen. I put up with a lotta shit back then I would not put up with now. You had eyes on your sister at least the last fifteen minutes. I think you can see why I’m pretty fuckin’ pleased I got the chance to make the switch twenty-five years later.”
“Harsh,” he heard Sully mutter from behind him. “True, but harsh,” he added.”
― Kristen Ashley, quote from Games of the Heart
“Love isn’t an accident or something that just happens when you’re not looking. Love is a choice, not a chance.”
― Autumn Doughton, quote from In This Moment
Dreamland Burning
The Civil War, Vol....
M Train
Dear Life
Insane Clown Preside...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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