“I wanted my own words. But the ones I use have been dragged through I don't know how many consciences.”
“I clung to nothing, in a way I was calm. But it was a horrible calm—because of my body; my body, I saw with its eyes, I heard with its ears, but it was no longer me; it sweated and trembled by itself and I didn’t recognize it any more.”
“He loves me, he doesn't love my bowels, if they showed him my appendix in a glass he wouldn't recognize it, he's always feeling me, but if they put the glass in his hands he wouldn't touch it, he wouldn't think, "that's hers," you ought to love all of somebody, the esophagus, the liver, the intestines. Maybe we don't love them because we aren't used to them, but if we saw them the way we saw our hands and arms maybe we'd love them; the starfish must love each other better than we do.”
“I had spent my time
counterfeiting eternity.”
“I had spent my time counterfeiting eternity, I had understood nothing.”
“No, my child, these things are impossible. It would have been better if she had recognize the truth courageously. She would have suffered once, then time would have erased with its sponge. There is nothing like looking things in the face, believe me.”
“je prenais tout au sérieux, comme si j'avais été immortel.”
“Lucien thought with bitter pleasure that his parents found him looking fine. “I don’t exist.” He closed his eyes and let himself drift: existence is an illusion because I know I don t exist, all I have to do is plug my ears and not think about anything and I’ll become nothingness.”
“İnsan, insanlara var olmadıklarını inandırmak için bir felsefe incelemesine güvenemezdi. Bunun bir eylem olması gerekiyordu, gerçekten öylesine umutsuz bir eylem ki görüntüleri silsin götürsündü ve dünyanın hiçliğini gün ışığına göstersindi.
Bir patlama, kan içinde genç bir beden halının üstünde, bir kağıda yazılmış sözcükler: Kendimi öldürüyorum, çünkü var değilim. Ve siz de insan kardeşlerim, hiçsiniz!”
“Varlığı bir rezaletti ve daha sonra üstüne alacağı sorumluluklar bu rezaleti doğrulamaya yetecekti.”
“Į žmones reikia žiūrėti iš aukštai. Būdavo, užgesinu šviesą ir atsistoju prie lango: jie nė neįtaria, kad juos galima stebėti ir iš viršaus. Jie rūpinasi savo priekiu, kartais užpakaliu, bet visi jų triukai skirti metro setyniasdešimties centimetrų ūgio žiūrovui. O ar kas nors kada pagalvojo, kaip atrodo katiliuko formos kepurė žvelgiant iš septinto aukšto? <...> Vieną vakarą man toptelėjo mintis pašaudyti į žmones.”
“Antes de alguém viver, a vida, em si mesma, não é nada; é quem é a vive que deve dar-lhe um sentido; e o valor nada mais que constatar-se, assim, que é possível criar uma comunidade humana.”
“Before beginning this treatise, he wanted the advice of The Baboon, his philosophy prof. “Excuse me, sir,” he said at the end of a class, “could anyone claim that we don’t exist?” The Baboon said no. “Goghito,” he said, “ergo zum. You exist because you doubt your existence.”
“I consented to die in his place; his life had no more value than mine; no life had value. They were going to slap a man up against a wall and shoot at him till he died, whether it was I or Gris or somebody else made no difference. I knew he was more useful than I to the cause of Spain but I thought to hell with Spain and anarchy; nothing was important.”
“Biz gümbürtüye gitmiş insanlarız," diyordu gururla, "biz hayatı ıskalayanlardanız. Hiçbir işe yaramayacağız.”
“The writing is never what takes the most time. It’s trying to figure what you’re going to put down that fills the days. With anger at your own ineptitude, with frustration that nothing is happening inside your head, with panic that maybe nothing will ever happen inside your head, with blessed little moments that somehow knit together so that you can begin to visualize a scene.”
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16KJV).”
“I am rewarding you, and I am punishing you. For a reward for your courage, your bravery, you will never die. And for punishment, for having seen what cannot be seen, you will never return to this place.”
“I would lie of course. I lied a lot and with good reason: to protect the truth—safeguard it like wearing fake gems to keep the real ones from getting stolen or cheapened by overuse. I guarded what truths I possessed because information was not a thing—it was colorless odorless shapeless and therefore indestructible. There was no way to retrieve or void it no way to halt its proliferation. Telling someone a secret was like storing plutonium inside a sandwich bag the information would inevitably outlive the friendship or love or trust in which you’d placed it. And then you would have given it away.”
“More sheltering is rarely an antidote for too much in the first place.”
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