There are lots of women who are attracted to tyrannical men. Like moths to a flame. And there are some women who do not need a hero or even a stormy lover but a friend. Just remember that when you grow up. Steer clear of the tryant lovers, and try to locate the ones who are looking for a man as a friend, not because they are feeling empty themselves but because they enjoy making you full too. And remember that friendship between a woman and..
If you steal from one book you are condemned as a plagiarist, but if you steal from ten books you are considered a scholar, and if you steal from thirty or forty books, a distinguished scholar.
When I was little, my ambition was to grow up to be a book. Not a writer. People can be killed like ants. Writers are not hard to kill either. But not books: however systematically you try to destroy them, there is always a chance that a copy will survive and continue to enjoy a shelf-life in some corner on an out-of-the-way library somehwere in Reykjavik, Valladolid or Vancouver.
that sour blend of loneliness and lust for recognition, shyness and extravagance, deep insecurity and self-intoxicated egomania, that drives poets and writers out of their rooms to seek each other out, to rub shoulders with one another, bully, joke, condescend, feel each other, lay a hand on a shoulder or an arm round a waist, to chat and argue with little nudges, to spy a little, sniff out what is cooking in other pots, flatter, disagree, ..
Love is a curious mixture of opposites, a blend of extreme selfishness and total devotion. A paradox! Besides which, love, everybody is always talking about love, love, but love isn't something you choose, you catch it like a disease, you get trapped in it, like a disaster.
I believe that if one person is watching a huge calamity, let's say a conflagration, a fire, there are always three principle options. 1. Run away, as far away and as fast as you can and let those who cannot run burn.
while it was true that books could change with the years just as much as people could, the difference was that whereas people would always drop you when they could no longer get any advantage or pleasure or interest or at least a good feeling from you, a book would never abandon you. Naturally you sometimes dropped them, maybe for several years, or even forever. But they, even if you betrayed them, would never turn their backs on you: they ..
The fact is that all the power in the world cannot transform someone who hates you into someone who likes you. It can turn a foe into a slave, but not into a friend. All the power in the world cannot transform a fanatic into an enlightened man. All the power in the world cannot transform someone thirsting for vengeance into a lover.
And remember that friendship between a woman and a man is something much more precious and rare than love: love is actually something quite gross and even clumsy compared to friendship. Friendship includes a measure of sensitivity, attentiveness, generosity, and a finely tuned sense of moderation.
He had the feeling that he must make a decision, and though he was used to making many decisions every day, this time he was beset with uncertainty; in fact he had no idea what was being asked of him
Feelings are just a fire in a field of stubble: it burns for a moment, and then all that's left is soot and ashes. Do you know what the main thing is--the thing a woman should look for in her man? She should look for a quality that's not at all exciting but that's rarer than gold: decency.
Judaism and Christianity, and Islam too, all drip honeyed words of love and mercy so long as they do not have access to handcuffs, grills, dominion, torture chambers, and gallows. All these faiths, including those that have appeared in recent generations and continue to mesmerize adherents to this day, all arose to save us and all just as soon started to shed our blood.
Vseki ot nas e poluostrov, napolovina sv'rzan s's sushata, napolovina ob'rnat k'm okeana. Ednata ni polovina e sv'rzana zdravo s's semeistvoto, priiatelite, kulturata, mestnata traditsiia, natsiiata, pola, ezika i mnogo drugi neshcha, a drugata polovina iska svobodata da se ob'rne k'm okeana.
Faith, coming from the lack of faith: as much as the faith in oneself is demolished, as much the intoxicating faith in the salvation becomes strong and the desperate need to be save grows. The savior is that much great, as you're small, insignificant and unworthy. Anri Begrson writes: "It's not true that faith can move mountains. On the contrary, the main thing in faith is the ability not to notice anything, even the moving of the mountain ..
The real tragedy of humankind,' Shealtiel used to say, 'is not that the persecuted and enslaved crave to be liberated and to hold their heads high. No. The worst thing is that the enslaved secretly dream of enslaving their enslavers. The persecuted yearn to be persecutors. The slaves dream of being masters. As in the book of Esther.
We could talk about totally different things. Like the seasons of the year, for example, or even the star-filled sky of these summer nights: I'm interested in stars and nebulas. Maybe you are, too?
And so I learnt the secret of diversity. Life is made up of different avenues. Everything can happen in one of several ways, according to different musical scores and parallel logics. Each of these parallel logics is consistent and coherent in its own terms, perfect in itself, indifferent to all the others. In
The very word 'disappears' implies that the universe is, so to speak, finite, and that it is possible to leave it. But no-o-othing" (he deliberately drew the word out) "can ever leave the universe. And nothing can enter it. Not a single speck of dust can appear or disappear. Matter is transformed into energy, and energy into matter,"
there are places in the world where real life is still happening, far away from here, in a pre-Hitler Europe, where hundreds of lights are lit every evening, ladies and gentlemen gather to drink coffee with cream in oak-panelled rooms, or sit comfortably in splendid coffee-houses under gilt chandeliers, stroll arm in arm to the opera or the ballet, observe from close-up the lives of great artists, passionate love affairs, broken hearts, the..
with Jewish families: they believed that education was an investment in the future, the only thing that no one can ever take away from your children, even if, heaven forbid, there's another war, another revolution, another migration, more discriminatory laws--your diploma you can always fold up quickly, hide it in the seams of your clothes, and run away to wherever Jews are allowed to live.
And in fact that selfsame strange urge I had when I was small - the desire to grant a second chance to something that could never have one - is still one of the urges that set me going today whenever I sit down to write a story.
Personally I do not believe in world reform. No. I do not believe in any kind of world reform. Not because I consider that the world is perfect as it is--certainly not, the world is crooked and grim and full of suffering--but whoever comes along to reform it soon sinks in rivers of blood. Now let's drink a glass of tea and leave aside these obscenities you've brought me today. If only all religions and all revolutions vanished from the face..
La tragedia de los hombres, decia Shaltiel, no estriba en que los perseguidos y los oprimidos aspiren a liberarse y a hacerse respetar. No. La maldad esta en que los oprimidos, en lo mas profundo de sus corazones, realmente suenan en convertirse en opresores de sus opresores. Los perseguidos anhelan ser perseguidores. Los siervos suenan con ser amos.
Almost everyone traverses their lifespan, from birth to death, with eyes closed. Even you and I, my dear Shmuel. With eyes closed. If we open our eyes for just a moment, a great and terrible cry will burst forth from us and we shall scream and never stop. And if we don't cry out day and night, that's a sign that our eyes are closed.
assemble and disperse, everything changes and is transformed, but no-o-othing can ever change from being to not-being. Not even the tiniest hair growing on the tail of some virus. The concept of infinity is indeed open, infinitely open, but at the same time it is also closed and hermetically sealed. Nothing leaves and nothing enters.
I could imagine his sorrow. My father had a sensual relationship with his books. He loved feeling them, stroking them, sniffing them. He took a physical pleasure in books: he could not stop himself, he had to reach out and touch them, even other people's books. And books then really were sexier than books today: they were good to sniff and stroke and fondle. There were books with gold writing on fragrant, slightly rough leather bindings, th..
Precisamos de um senso de justica, mas precisamos tambem de senso comum, de imaginacao, de uma capacidade profunda de imaginar o outro, as vezes de nos colocarmos na pele do outro. Precisamos da capacidade racional de nos comprometer e, as vezes, de fazer sacrificios e concessoes. p. 53
Kad sam bio dijete, nadao sam se da cu kad odrastem postati knjiga. Ne knjizevnik, nego knjiga. Ljude se moze pobiti kao mrave, pa ni knjizevnike nije tesko ubiti. Ali za knjigu, cak i ako je sustavno uniste, postoji sansa da se neki primjerak spasio i da ce nastaviti zivjeti na polici, zivjeti nijemim zivotom na nekoj od zaboravljenih polica u nekoj zabacenoj knjiznici, u Rejkjaviku, Valladolidu ili Vancouveru.