“حتى أن الوهم بدأ يتضاءل، كان كبيرا في البداية واليوم صار ينكمش ويصغر، مع هذا لا أزال متمسكة به.”
“I went mad before he did, you killed everything in me. Kiss me,will you. Stop defending yourself.”
“A novel is just a story that hasn t yet discovered a way to be brief.”
“It’s not that we have to leave this life one day, it s how many things we have to leave all at once: holding hands, hotel rooms, wine, summertime, drunkenness, and the physics of falling leaves, clothing, myrrh, perfumed hair, flirting friends, two strangers glance; the reflection of the moon, with words like, Soon ... do you want me? ... ...to lie enlaced ... and sleep entwined thinking ahead, with thoughts behind...? Ô, Why! Why can’t we leave this life slowly?”
“My conception of a novel is that it ought to be a personal struggle, a direct and total engagement with the author s story of his or her own life. This conception, again, I take from Kafka, who, although he was never transformed into an insect, and although he never had a piece of food (an apple from his family s table!) lodged in his flesh and rotting there, devoted his whole life as a writer to describing his personal struggle with his family, with women, with moral law, with his Jewish heritage, with his Unconscious, with his sense of guilt, and with the modern world. Kafka s work, which grows out of the nighttime dreamworld in Kafka s brain, is *more* autobiographical than any realistic retelling of his daytime experiences at the office or with his family or with a prostitute could have been. What is fiction, after all, if not a kind of purposeful dreaming? The writer works to create a dream that is vivid and has meaning, so that the reader can then vividly dream it and experience meaning. And work like Kafka s, which seems to proceed directly from dream, is therefore an exceptionally pure form of autobiography. There s an important paradox here that I would like to stress: the greater the autobiographical content of a fiction writer s work, the *smaller* its superficial resemblance to the writer s actual life. The deeper the writer digs for meaning, the more the random particulars of the writer s life become *impediments* to deliberate dreaming.”
“وحده البكاء والحزن كان يحتضن وحدتي، وحدتي التي وددت لو تخترقها بكلماتك، لو تسمح لي على الأقل بأن أحبك على طريقي، بأن أقول لك كل شيء عني، بأن تتقبل ثرثراتي ولا تتمنى أن أختفي من الكون أنا التي صارت أمنيتي الوحيدة أن يخلو الكون من الناس وتبقى أنت.”
“Of course, that’s how life is. A turn of events may seem very small at the time it’s happening, but you never really know, do you? How can you?”
“هي- لماذا لا نستطيع تقليد الغرب في حبهم للحياة بهذه القوة؟ هو -التخلف ولا شيء آخر . نحتاج إلى قرون أخرى لكي نرفع رؤوسنا قليلاً نحو الشمس”
“إنه يبحث عن نفسه ! يتلمس الأرواح لعلّه يجده ، يدير جسده بنصف خيبة ، يلوك وجعه ويمضي”
“نحن حين نحب لا نتساءل على الأعمار، لا تشغلنا الظروف، لا تؤرقنا الحقائق، ولا تهمنا الصغائر.”
“The dominant primordial beast was strong in Buck”
“هنري عندما قام بالرد على فكرة فرانكشتاين بخلق إنسان ( نعم ، لا تروق لي .. إذ ليس من شأن الإنسان أن يخلق الحياة ، هناك أشياء لا ينبغي للإنسان أن يحاول معرفتها أو القيام بها . إن للإنسان مكانه المناسب في الطبيعة ، و من الخير له ألا يحاول تجاوزه \ فرانكشتاين(”
“Para el obispo, la vista de la guillotina fue un golpe terrible del cual tardó mucho tiempo en reponerse. En efecto: el patíbulo, cuando está ante nuestros ojos levantado, derecho, tiene algo que alucina. Se puede sentir cierta indiferencia hacia la pena de muerte, no pronunciarse ni en pro ni en contra, no decir ni sí ni que no mientras no se ha visto una guillotina; pero si se llega a ver una, la sacudida es violenta; es menester decidirse y tomar partido en pro o en contra de ella. Los unos admiran, como De Maistre; los otros execran, como Beccaria. La guillotina es la concreción de la ley: se llama vindicta ; no es indiferente ni os permite que lo seáis tampoco. Quien llega a verla se estremece con el más misterioso de los estremecimientos. Todas las cuestiones sociales alzan sus interrogantes en torno de aquella cuchilla. El cadalso es una visión: no es un tablado ni una máquina, ni un mecanismo frío de madera, de hierro y de cuerdas. Parece que es una especie de ser que tiene no sé qué sombría iniciativa. Se diría que aquellos andamios ven, que aquella madera, aquel hierro y aquellas cuerdas tienen voluntad. En la horrible meditación en que aquella vista sume al alma, el patíbulo aparece terrible y como teniendo conciencia de lo que hace. El patíbulo es el cómplice del verdugo; devora, come carne, bebe sangre. Es una especie de monstruo fabricado por el juez y por el carpintero; un espectro que parece vivir una especie de vida espantosa, hecha con todas las muertes que ha dado.”
“Two questions form the foundation of all novels: What if? and What next? (A third question, What now? , is one the author asks himself every 10 minutes or so; but it s more a cry than a question.) Every novel begins with the speculative question, What if X happened? That s how you start.”
“I m gonna make him an offer he can t refuse.”
“How I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature.”
“and all I could think was that I would like to spend every morning for the rest of my life waking up beside her”