“Her life was like a burst of wild, flowing Chinese calligraphy, written under the influence of alcohol.”
“Kissing with the tip of the tongue is like ice-cream melting. It was he who taught me that a kiss has a soul and colour of its own.”
“I think too much, and 99.9 per cent of men don’t want to get involved with a woman who thinks too much.”
“It’s hard to deny life’s little ironies. Wrong place, wrong roles, but united in our commitment to life’s young dream. And yet, our bodies were already tarnished and our minds beyond yelp.”
“Love was a miracle the flesh couldn’t copy.”
“Death’s shadow only fades little by little as time passes. There will never be more than a thin glass barrier between your present and the wreckage of your past”
“Fear of loneliness is what teaches us to love,”
“On the surface we're two utterly different types. I'm full of energy and ambition, and see the world as a scented fruit just waiting to be eaten. He is introspective, romantic and for him life is a cake laced with arsenic, every bite poisons him a little more. But our differences only increased our mutual attraction, like the inseparable north and south magnetic poles. We rapidly fell in love.”
“Tal vez una escritora simplemente inspira confianza debido a su capacidad intuitiva y a su comprensión.”
“Sabia que estaba algo tomada, estar un poco borracha es agradable, todo se puede ver más claro, como cuando la niebla se dispersa.”
“Kundera dijo que en el siglo XXI todos serán escritores, con sólo tomar la pluma y escribir lo que se piensa. El deseo de compartir sus sentimientos es una necesidad espiritual de todos los seres humanos.”
“Tian Tian'in de gözlerinin kapalı olduğunu gördüm. Kırmızı şarap içip üflemek insanın uykusunu getirir ve onun da çoktan uykuya daldığından eminim. Tian Tian gürültülü sesler ve hayalet gölgeler arasında uykuya dalmayı daha kolay bulur.”
“Akılsızca bir seçim yapmıştım. Tohumla çiçeği ayırt edememiştim. Ve kadının erkeğini seçmekteki hatası, onun en büyük utancıdır.”
“She believes in these words: suck dry the juice of life like a leech, including its secret happiness and hurt, spontaneous passion and eternal longing.”
“What I saw was a face which couldn’t be called pretty, but one also not easily forgotten: pointed features, oblique eyebrows, pale skin with slightly enlarged pores, and expensive lipstick that threatened to drip off her lips. Once beautiful, but now a dream in which willow branches have withered, clouds have scattered and drifting petals have fallen to the ground. A face that has been corroded by pleasure, impetuosity and dreams, each of which has left scars on it, leaving it sharp yet worn, capable of hurting, yet vulnerable as well.”
“Death is the expression of exhaustion, a solution arrived at rationally once one has known the deepest depths of tiredness.”
“Bu yüzden iyi bir yazar olacaksın. Bir yazar geçmişi sözcükleriyle gömer.”
“In my novel, a couple hold each other close as a raging fire spreads through their room. They know they can’t leave. Fire has sealed off all windows and corridors, leaving them only one thing to do: make love madly in the heart of the blaze.”
“İkimiz de biraz şaşkındık. Tian Tian'in yatakta gözleri kapalı beni dinlediğini ve telefonun ucundaki Alman'ın neden beni aradığını biliyordum. Böylesi hassas bir durum tıpkı haşhaşlı brownie gibiydi. Öyle önemli bir tadı yoktu,hatta bir parça fazla yemek bile tadı hakkındaki yorumunuza bir şey katmazdı, ama o üçüncü ısırıştan sonra hoş olmayan ve sizi salıveren bir şey olurdu. Ve belki de derinlerde bir yerlerde bunu şiddetle arzulayan türde bir kızdım.”
“O anda, tek istediğim birkaç gram otokontroldü. Tam o sırada ondan uzaklabilirdim ve daha sonra olanların hiçbiri olmazdı. Ama hiç de önlem seven biri değildim, olmak da istemiyordum. Yirmi beş yaşındaydım ve asla güvende olmayı özlemedim. "İnsan her şeyi yapabilir, yapılması gerekenkerli ve yapılmaması gerekenleri." Dali'nin ifadesi böyle bir şeydi.”
“Yanıma uzandı. Başı, saçımın üzerindeydi. Çıplak bedenlerimizle çarşafa sarınıp sigara içtik. Gözlerimizin önünde boşluğu, sigara dumanı tam zamanında doldurdu, ve konuşmak zorunda kalmadık. Bazen insan bir ses çıkarmak istemez. Bunun yerine aklı hareketsiz, sessiz bir filme dalar.”
“Giyinmek için kalktığımda üzerimi bir keyifsizlik kaplamıştı. Şehvet ve orgazm geçmişti. Film bitip izleyiciler toplu halde çıkmaya başladığında, tüm duyduğunuz, eski halini koltukların tıkırtısı, ayak sesleri, temizlenen boğazlardır. Karakterler, öykü ve müzik yok olmuştur. Ama Tian Tian'ın yüzünün beynimde gidiş gelişi bir türlü yok olmayacaktır.”
“Sentada enfrente de mis borradores, de repente me invadió el pánico como cuando un mago descubre que acaba de perder sus poderes por completo. Ahora simplemente no podía penetrar en el mundo distante de las letras, a mi alrededor ocurrían cambios incesantemente, como las pequeñas ondas del agua. Siempre había pensado en un triunfo repentino, como Alí Baba que sólo con leer un conjuro abrió la puerta de la cueva del tesoro, como Bill Gates que en una noche se convirtió en archimillonario, como Gong Li que a mi edad ya había subyugado a decenas de millones de hombres blancos con su magnífica belleza sin hablar una sola palabra de inglés.”
“There was no point in tears outliving eyes, so she let them fall.”
“Today, Medina is simultaneously the archetype of Islamic democracy and the impetus for Islamic militancy. Islamic Modernists like the Egyptian writer and political philosopher Ali Abd ar-Raziq (d. 1966) pointed to Muhammad’s community in Medina as proof that Islam advocated the separation of religious and temporal power, while Muslim extremists in Afghanistan and Iran have used the same community to fashion various models of Islamic theocracy. In their struggle for equal rights, Muslim feminists have consistently drawn inspiration from the legal reforms Muhammad instituted in Medina, while at the same time, Muslim traditionalists have construed those same legal reforms as grounds for maintaining the subjugation of women in Islamic society. For some, Muhammad’s actions in Medina serve as the model for Muslim-Jewish relations; for others, they demonstrate the insurmountable conflict that has always existed, and will always exist, between the two sons of Abraham. Yet regardless of whether one is labeled a Modernist or a Traditionalist, a reformist or a fundamentalist, a feminist or a chauvinist, all Muslims regard Medina as the model of Islamic perfection. Simply put, Medina is what Islam was meant to be.”
“Instead, ourselves the beneficiaries of this kind of benign neglect, we now measure success as the extent to which we manage to keep our children monitored, tethered, tied to us.”
“Great minds defend values—like justice in the case of Victor Hugo, and equality for Emile Zola.”
“Find love, Marcus. Love gives life its meaning. You’re stronger when you love. You’re bigger. You go further.”
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