Quotes from Thus Bad Begins

“Advertir que alguien quiere vincularse a nosotros sexualmente nos obliga a considerarlo,”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“Cuando han pasado muchos años, o incluso no tantos, la gente se cuenta los hechos como le conviene y llega a creerse su propia versión, su distorsión.”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“No hay que prestar más dinero del que uno estaría dispuesto a regalarle a quien le asesta el sablazo.”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“la mirada no se domina, a menudo actúa al margen de nuestras instrucciones y de nuestras censuras, o es que bajo ese pretexto le permitimos desobedecernos.”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“uno hace descubrimientos extraños una vez que toca o es tocado, una vez que uno roza un muslo por accidente”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“No puede andar escuchando las historias con que le viene cualquiera ni hacer de juez universal. No puede dedicarse a castigar, ni siquiera con su actitud, o retirando la amistad, a quien tal vez haya hecho algo malo en alguna ocasión. No acabaríamos,”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“poco es lo que se hace público, poco lo que interesa, poco lo que quiere conocer la gente, que está fijada en lo suyo, cada uno en lo propio y lo de los demás qué importa.”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“Cuando alguien decide matarse, no hay manera de impedirlo.”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“Incontable es el número de criaturas que han tomado por padre a quien no lo era suyo y por hermanos a quienes lo eran a medias,”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“nadie renuncia a la posibilidad de contar algo anómalo.”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“Cuando han pasado muchos años, o incluso no tantos, la gente se cuenta los hechos como le conviene y llega a creerse su propia versión, su distorsión. Con”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“Se vio incitado por ciertas personas lascivas a convertirse en un extraño para su mujer’.”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“no me hubieras dicho nada, si me hubieras mantenido en el engaño. Cuando se lleva uno a cabo, hay que sostenerlo hasta el final.”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“—nos detiene a veces lo que no nos importa—”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“Nunca hay que dejar entrar a nadie, ni un solo día, a menos que esté uno dispuesto a que se quede para siempre.”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“Lo que importó ya no importa o muy poco, y para ese poco hay que hacer un esfuerzo;”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“Contármelo a mí es lo más parecido a no contárselo a nadie.”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“la historia está demasiado llena de pequeños abusos y vilezas mayúsculas”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“Prefiero la palidez de este muerto andante al color del mundo entero. Prefiero demorarme y morir en su palidez que vivir a la luz de todos los vivos.”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“Pero a todo se acostumbra uno pronto y toda idea se sustituye.”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“Qué sentido tiene sacar un día del error. Eso es aún peor, porque desmientes lo habido y uno tiene que volverse a contar lo vivido o negárselo. Y sin embargo vivió lo que vivió. ¿Qué hace uno entonces con eso? ¿Tachar su vida? Eso no es posible, como tampoco renunciar a los años que fueron y ya no pueden ser de otro modo, y de ellos quedará siempre un resto, un recuerdo, aunque ahora sea fantasmagórico, algo que ocurrió y que no ocurrió. ¿Y dónde coloca uno eso, lo que ocurrió y no ocurrió?".”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“ignoramos lo que se fraguó entre la gente que nos precede, y lo más seguro es que lo ignoremos siempre, porque siempre llegamos tarde a la vida de las personas.”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“se tarda más en hablar que en echar un prefijado polvo, sea de nuevo mal dicho y para mejor entendernos.”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“las personas desdichadas se empeñan en averiguar muchas veces la magnitud de su desdicha, o en indagar vidas ajenas para abstraerse de las suyas.”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“Polvo echado, visita acabada, me dio que era una situación de esas: poco que hablar antes, y después nada.”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

“Hay gente contenta y conforme, que sólo aspira a que cada día sea igual que el anterior y que el próximo; y a que no se acaben.”
― Javier Marías, quote from Thus Bad Begins

About the author

Popular quotes

“And that the love of a parent for a child is the most powerful force on earth.”
― Lucinda Riley, quote from The Seven Sisters

“Another example of how a metaphor can create new meaning for us came about by accident. An Iranian student, shortly after his arrival in Berkeley, took a seminar on metaphor from one of us. Among the wondrous things that he found in Berkeley was an expression that he heard over and over and understood as a beautifully sane metaphor. The expression was “the solution of my problems”—which he took to be a large volume of liquid, bubbling and smoking, containing all of your problems, either dissolved or in the form of precipitates, with catalysts constantly dissolving some problems (for the time being) and precipitating out others. He was terribly disillusioned to find that the residents of Berkeley had no such chemical metaphor in mind. And well he might be, for the chemical metaphor is both beautiful and insightful. It gives us a view of problems as things that never disappear utterly and that cannot be solved once and for all. All of your problems are always present, only they may be dissolved and in solution, or they may be in solid form. The best you can hope for is to find a catalyst that will make one problem dissolve without making another one precipitate out. [...] The CHEMICAL metaphor gives us a new view of human problems. It is appropriate to the experience of finding that problems which we once thought were “solved” turn up again and again. The CHEMICAL metaphor says that problems are not the kind of things that can be made to disappear forever. To treat them as things that can be “solved” once and for all is pointless. [...] To live by the
CHEMICAL metaphor would mean that your problems have a different kind of reality for you.”
― George Lakoff, quote from Metaphors We Live By

“[Jesus] is, at the moment, present with us, but hidden behind that invisible veil which keeps heaven and earth apart, and which we pierce in those moments, such as prayer, the sacraments, the reading of scripture, and our work with the poor, when the veil seems particularly thin. But one day the veil will be lifted; earth and heaven will be one; Jesus will be personally present, and every knee shall bow at his name; creation will be renewed; the dead will be raised; and God's new world will at last be in place, full of new prospects and possibilities.”
― N.T. Wright, quote from Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense

“As we paint each other's nails Cinnamon Vixen, I consider telling her how bad things are at home. After she and Dan and Laura left for college, everything got worse. Mother's mood swings, Dad's violence, the name-calling at school.”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir

“Funny how imperfections on the outside mean something splendid beneath.”
― Louise Penny, quote from The Brutal Telling

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.