“Cały kłopot z fikcją literacką polega na tym - rzekł John Rivers - że za dużo w niej sensu. W rzeczywistości nigdy nie ma sensu”
“Monsters are real and ghosts are real too they live inside us and sometimes they win.”
“Shakespeare s bitter play [Troilus and Cressida] is therefore a dramatization of a part of a translation into English of the French translation of a Latin imitation of an old French expansion of a Latin epitome of a Greek romance. (p. 55)”
“People don’t read to enlighten themselves or seek to gain some valuable insight into their own psychology. People read to escape.”
“By their very nature, idiots do not have the intellectual capacity to identify genius. All that idiots are mentally equipped to recognize are other idiots.”
“Oh literature is a wonderful thing, Varenka, a very wonderful thing: I discovered that from being with those people the day before yesterday. It is a profound thing. It strengthens people’s hearts and instructs them,… Literature is a picture, or rather in a certain sense both a picture and a mirror; it is an expression of emotion, a subtle form of criticism, a didactic lesson and a document…”
“Kiss like you never had a past.”
“O, great wise man, she said, I have been wondering so many things. Is life more than sitting at home doing the same thing over and over? Wise man, is life more than watching one s relatives do unpleasant things, or more than grim tasks one must perform at school and at work? Is life more than being entertained by literature, wise man, or more than traveling from one place to another, suffering from poor emotional health and pondering the people one loves? And what about those who lead a life of mystery? And the mysteries of life? And, wise man, what about the overall feeling of doom that one cannot ever escape no matter what one does, and miscellaneous things that I have neglected to mention in specific?”
“I can hear the library humming in the night, a choir of authors murmuring inside their books along the unlit, alphabetical shelves, Giovanni Pontano next to Pope, Dumas next to his son, each one stitched into his own private coat, together forming a low, gigantic chord of language.”
“You can be a good painter if you study Cézanne s vision. Whoever dares to copy Van Gogh falls inevitably into the hell of imitators. For this painter didn t care about masterpieces, or even good paintings... but about what is beyond all painting, all art.”
“Truth that is naked is the most beautiful.”
“Hati yang tulus selalu sanggup mengatasi perpisahan yang diakibatkan oleh jarak dan waktu.”
“So what does it mean for a person to devote himself or herself to, as you put it, “literary reading and thinking”? I would argue this is a person who’s trying to see things for what they are. Who’s interested in distinguishing the truth from the lies, the real from the fake, the solid from the cheap. Those are the people who want to think for themselves, and I really question whether we can make good lives for ourselves if we aren’t doing our own thinking.”
“هم مجبولون على ممارسة اللذة، ويقال أنهم يمتلكون نسخا متعددة من الأجساد، كلما أصاب الوهن أحدها تقدم الآخر، وقد تمكن مراسل شبكة تليفزيونية من التسلل الى أحد قصور المدينة وصور شريطا كاملا بكاميرا خاصة استطاعت رصد انطفاء الأجساد وتخلق الأخرى من رمادها كما تخرج النبتة من الطين.”
“The back of the church was raised up from the ground. Tossed in among its supports were what looked like moldering bones. My heart ached so much for these poor souls, neglected even after death, I turned away to head back, but managed only a few burdened steps. I drew up abruptly and froze. An old, worn marker, standing off by itself, grabbed at my heart. It was Edgar Alan Poe. He fit in so perfectly there. Maybe I did, too. His sorrow and pain ate through me as I stood, head lowered. Can’t even death let us step away from our darkness? It was like he was scratching a warning into the dirt with his finger, and meant it specifically for me. Don’t wait around for sermons to wash you clean, he seemed to say, for death or drugs to close your eyes. God won’t come roaring in with fresh troops to drive away the darkness we’ve walled our own souls up in. He didn’t put us there; we’ll have to dig ourselves out. I looked at my own life as I stood there, feeling buried alive, like some of his characters. But unlike his characters I had caught a flash of hope.”
“Gracia…, esa es mi palabra favorita de la iglesia. Un estado del ser, algo por lo que puedes rezar, algo que Dios te puede conceder, algo que si se puede obtener. La perfección es inalcanzable, pero la gracia…, la gracia puede alcanzarse.”
“I steal a glance when no one is looking. Especially at his neck, when he turns to say something to my mother. That slender neck, with its air of determination, brisk and bold…”