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some small part of his soul drifted toward the abyss of dreams.
Have you begun some strange trek through the sand dunes of the unconscious?
My life is created as I narrate, and my memory grows stronger with writing; what I do not put in words on a page will be erased by time.
Writing is a long process of introspection; it is a voyage toward the darkest caverns of consciousness, a long, slow meditation. I write feeling my way in silence, and along the way discover particles of truth, small crystals that fit in the palm of one hand and justify my passage through this world.
The boundaries of reality have been blurred; life is a labyrinth of facing mirrors and deformed images.
The mind selects, enhances, and betrays; happenings fade from memory; people forget one another and, in the end, all that remains is the journey of the soul, those rare moments of spiritual revelation.
When he became a widower he abolished flowers, desserts, and music—any source of joy—from his life; silence spread through his house, and his soul.
In my grandfather’s house, which was as long as a railroad, the walls were so thin that our dreams intermingled at night.
I always believed I was different; as long as I can remember I have felt like an outcast, as if I didn’t really belong to my family, or to my surroundings, or to any group.
books are conceived in the search for answers.
La Paz is an extraordinary city, so near heaven, and with such thin air, that you can see the angels at dawn.
if I believed in reincarnation, I would think that it was our karma to meet and love each other in every life,
they have prodigious machines capable of photographing one’s most ancient memories.
The future does not exist, the Indians of the Altiplano say, we can only be sure of the past—from which we draw experience and knowledge—and the present—a brief spark that at the instant it is born becomes yesterday.
his soul has been tanned like leather
from years of being repeated, the fallacy became dogma.
Her strange poem is about a bird with petrified wings. It says you are already dead, and that you want to leave but can’t because I am holding you back, that I am an anchor tied to your feet.
Worms of sadness were eating away inside;
I can communicate with her only at night when she comes to visit me in dreams.
Sometimes I spend the night wandering through the house, like the mysterious skunks in the basement that creep up to eat the cat’s food, or my grandmother’s ghost that escapes from her mirror to chat with me.
I am a raft without a rudder, adrift on a sea of pain. During these long months I have been peeling away like an onion, layer after layer, changing;
his nourishment is ideas and books.
I’m lost, I don’t know who I am, I try to remember who I was once but I find only disguises, masks, projections, the confused images of a woman I can’t recognize.
she has a deep, warm voice that seems to issue from the earth itself,
The two moments are much alike: birth and death are made of the same fabric.
Her favorite reads include One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez), The Female Eunuch (Germaine Greer), La Lumière des Justes (Henri Troyat), The Aleph (Jorge Luis Borges), and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
“Few people know how to be still and find a quiet place inside themselves. From that place of silence and stillness the creative forces emerge; there we find faith, hope, strength, and wisdom.”
We have very busy lives—or we make them very busy. There is noise and activity everywhere. Few people know how to be still and find a quiet place inside themselves. From that place of silence and stillness the creative forces emerge; there we find faith, hope, strength, and wisdom. However, since childhood we are taught to do things. Our heads are full of noise. Silence and solitude scare most of us.
I never said I wanted a “happy” life but an interesting one.
It is a wonderful truth that things we want most in life—a sense of purpose, happiness, and hope—are most easily attained by giving them to others.
