“We all used to try so hard to fit in. We wanted to look exactly alike, do all the same things, practically be the same person, but when we weren t looking that all changed....what the summer actually brought was independence from each other.”
“Habíamos crecido demasiado separadas, y nuestras heridas del pasado eran demasiado grandes. La verdadera amistad ya no era una opción. Pero no siento melancolía acerca de ello, me siento aliviada. Hay cierto respeto y buenos deseos entre nosotras. Y eso no es cualquier cosa.”
“I ll put it on my table where I keep my drawings, Hassan said. His saying that made me kind of sad. Sad for who Hassan was, where he lived. For how he d accepted the fact that he d grow old in that mud shack in the yard, the way his father had.”
“If everyone in New York took sides over these petty, insignificant arguments, no one would have any friends at all.”
“Damn! What did Ansermet, that most faithful friend, know about Stravinsky s poverty of heart? What did he, that most devoted friend, know about Stravinsky s capacity to love? And where did he get his utter certainty that the heart is ethically superior to the brain? Are not vile acts committed as often with the heart s help as without it? Can t fanatics, with their bloody hands, boast of a high degree of affective activity ? Will we ever be done with this imbecile sentimental Inquisition, the heart s Reign of Terror?”
“Brod was a brilliant intellectual with exceptional energy; a generous man willing to do battle for others; his attachment to Kafka was warm and disinterested. The only problem was his artistic orientation: a man of ideas, he knew nothing of the passion for form; his novels (he wrote twenty of them) are sadly conventional; and above all: he understood nothing at all about modern art. Why, despite all this, was Kafka so fond of him? What about you-do you stop being fond of your best friend because he has a compulsion to write bad verse?”
“A spiritual connection with someone lasts forever, even when physical presence fades.”
“A dynamic person can easily grow and become a civil human when they start to live independently.”
“It s by stooping that fingers create a fist, and by standing tall that they give us open palms.”