The Lazarus Project

Home is where somebody notices when you are no longer there.

When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not.

Your nightmares follow you like a shadow, forever.

It seemed that we loved each other better when there were large swaths of two continents between us. The daily work of love was often hard to perform at home.

All the lives I could live, all the people I will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is all that the world is.

There are moments in life when it is all turned inside out--what is real becomes unreal, what is unreal becomes tangible, and all your levelheaded efforts to keep a tight ontological control are rendered silly and indulgent.

I loved you because there was no other place for me to go. We were married because we did not know what else to do with each other. You never knew me, nothing about me, what died inside me, what lived invisibly.

All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is what the world is.

The world is always greater than your desires; plenty is never enough.

Belief and delusion are incestuous siblings.

I recognized him then; that is, I finally comprehended what I had known but had never been able to formulate: he had always been complete. He had finished the work of becoming himself, long before any of us could even imagine such a feat was possible.

Home is where somebody notices your absence.

My country's main exports are stolen cars and sadness.

I am just like everybody else...because there is nobody like me in the whole world.

Because sometimes you have no control over life and it keeps you far away from who you love.

If you can't go home, there is nowhere to go, and nowhere is the biggest place in the world-indeed, nowhere is the world.

I will never know you, nothing about you, what has died inside you, what has lived invisibly. I am elsewhere now.

We dreamt of light, but hoped for darkness.

The more you lose, the more is to be lost, yet it matters less.

While customarily splling coffee grounds all over the counter, I spotted a can in the corner whose red label read SADNESS. Was there so much of it they could can it and sell it? A bolt of pain went through my intestines before I realized that it was not SADNESS but SARDINES.

Where can you go from nowhere, except deeper into nowhere?

She was beautiful; my breath was taken; we were still lonely; she said yes.

If you wait long enough, something will happen - there has never been a time when nothing happened.

People here snarl and frown a lot, he wrote; he had seen neither a smile nor the sun in months. What is life without beauty, love, and justice?

It was different in America: the incessant perpetuation of collective fantasies makes people crave the truth and nothing but the truth--reality is the fastest American commodity.

What you see is what you see, but that is never everything. Sarajavo is Sarajevo whatever you see or don't see. America is America. The past and future exist without you. And what you don't know about me is still my life. What I don't know about you is still your life. Nothing at all depends on you seeing it or not seeing it. I mean, who are you? You don't have to see or know everything.

If you find yourself asking: How did I get here? Isador once said, that probably means you are living a life worth living.

It is so much easier to deal with the dead than with the living. The dead are out of the way, merely characters from stories about the past, never again unreadable, no misunderstandings possible, the pain coming from them stable and manageable. nor do you have to explain yourself to them, to justify the fact of your life.

Let me tell you a joke, Rora said. Mujo wakes up one day, after a long night of drinking, and asks himself what the meaning of life is. He goes to work, but realizes that is not what life is or should be. He decides to read some philosophy and for years studies everything from the old Greeks onward, but can't find the meaning of life. Maybe it's the family, he thinks, so he spends time with his wife, Fata, and the kids, but finds no meaning in that and so he leaves them. He thinks, Maybe helping others is the meaning of life, so he goes to medical school, graduates with flying colors, goes to Africa to cure malaria and transplants hearts, but cannot discover the meaning of life. He thinks, maybe it's the wealth, so he becomes a businessman, starts making money hand over fist, millions of dollars, buys everything there is to buy, but that is not what life is about. Then he turns to poverty and humility and such, so he gives everything away and begs on the streets, but still he cannot see what life is. He thinks maybe it is literature: he writes novel upon novel, but the more he writes the more obscure the meaning of life becomes. He turns to God, lives the life of a dervish, reads and contemplates the Holy Book of Islam - still, nothing. He studies Christianity, then Judaism, then Buddhism, then everything else - no meaning of life there. Finally, he hears about a guru living high up in the mountains somewhere in the East. The guru, they say, knows what the meaning of life is. So Mujo goes east, travels for years, walks roads, climbs the mountain, finds the stairs that lead up to the guru. He ascends the stairs, tens of thousands of them, nearly dies getting up there. At the top, there are millions of pilgrims, he has to wait for months to get to the guru. Eventually it is his turn, he goes to a place under a big tree, and there sits the naked guru, his legs crossed, his eyes closed, meditating, perfectly peaceful - he surely knows the meaning of life, Mujo says: I have dedicated my life to discovering the meaning of life and I have failed, so I have come to ask you humbly, O Master, to divulge the secret to me. The guru opens his eyes, looks at Mujo, and calmly says, My friend, life is a river. Mujo stares at him for a long time, cannot believe what he heard. What's life again? Mujo asks. Life is a river, the guru says. Mujo nods and says, You turd of turds, you goddamn stupid piece of shit, you motherfucking cocksucking asshole. I have wasted my life and come all this way for you to tell me that life is a fucking river. A river? Are you kidding me? That is the stupidest, emptiest fucking thing I have ever heard. Is that what you spent your life figuring out? And the guru says, What? It is not a river? Are you saying it is not a river?