As far as Popescu was concerned, meanwhile, Dracula was simply a Romanian patriot who had resisted the Turks, a deed for which every European nation should to some degree be grateful. History is cruel, said Popescu, cruel and paradoxical: the man who...
Even on the poorest streets people could be heard laughing. Some of these streets were completely dark, like black holes, and the laughter that came from who knows where was the only sign, the only beacon that kept residents and strangers from gettin...
When you know something, you know it, and when you don't, you'd better learn. And in the meantime, you should keep quiet, or at least speak only when what you say will advance the learning process.
I don't know what I'm doing in Santa Teresa," Amalfitano said to himself after he'd been living in the city for a week. "Don't you? Don't you really?" he asked himself. "Really I don't," he said to himself. And that was as eloquent as he could be.
Younger than Morini and Pelletier, Espinoza studied Spanish literature, not German literature, at least for the first two years of his university career, among other sad reasons because he dreamed of being a writer.
He chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby-Dick, he chose A Simple Heart over Bouvard and Pecuchet, and A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers. What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even b...
The pain, or the memory of pain, that here was literally sucked away by something nameless until only a void was left. The knowledge that this question was possible: pain that turns finally into emptiness. The knowledge that the same equation applied...
Metaphors are our way of losing ourselves in semblances or treading water in a sea of seeming.
Then he went out without touching anything and put his arm around Ingeborg, and like that, with their arms around each other, they returned to the village while the whole past of the universe fell on their heads.
Bright colours in the west, giant butterflies dancing as night crept like a cripple toward the east.
And finally the two of them plunged into the dark sea, a sea like a pack of wolves, and they dove around the boat trying to find young Reiter's body, with no success, until they had to come up for air, and before they dove again, they asked the men o...
So everything lets us down, including curiosity and honesty and what we love best. Yes, said the voice, but cheer up, it's fun in the end.
Toda vida, le dijo esa noche Epifanio a Lalo Cura, por más feliz que sea, acaba siempre en dolor y sufrimiento. Depende, dijo Lalo Cura. ¿Depende de qué, buey? De muchas cosas, dijo Lalo Cura. Si te pegan un balazo en la nuca, por ejemplo, y el pi...
Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people's ideas, like listening to music (oh yes), like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.
Another time, talking about his books, the baroness confessed that she had never bothered to read any of them, because she hardly ever read 'difficult' or 'dark' novels like the ones he wrote. With the years, too, this habit had grown entrenched, and...
For her, reading was directly linked to pleasure, not to knowledge or enigmas or constructions or verbal labyrinths…
Reading is never a waste of time.
Did Jesus Christ, he asked, suspect that someday his church would spread to the farthest corners of Earth? Did Jesus Christ, he asked, ever have what we, today, call an idea of the world? Did Jesus Christ, who apparently knew everything, know that th...
