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February 27 - March 21, 2021
It was only when I’d abandoned all hope that I discovered it.
The memories we bury under mountains of silence are the ones that never stop haunting us.
“In life, nothing worthwhile is easy, Daniel.
“You’d be surprised at how often one looks in the present or in the future for answers that are always in the past.”
Experience had taught her that modesty always invited scrutiny.
Most of us mortals never get to know our real destiny; we’re just trampled by it. By the time we raise our heads and see it moving off down the road, it’s already too late, and we have to walk the rest of the way along the straight and narrow ditch that dreamers call maturity. Hope is no more than the belief that that moment hasn’t yet come, that we might still manage to see our real destiny when it draws near and jump on board before the chance of being ourselves disappears forever, condemning us to live in emptiness, missing what should have been and never was.
They all looked at her with what seemed like pity, or perhaps she only saw in others what she herself felt inside.
Books taught me to think, to feel, and to live a thousand lives.
One doesn’t become aware of the emptiness in which one has allowed time to go by until one truly lives. Sometimes life—not the days that have burned away—is just an instant, a day, a week, or a month.
“What Fermín says is that wise men own up when they sometimes make mistakes, but idiots always make mistakes, even though they never admit it and always think they’re right. He calls it his Archimedean Principle of Communicable Imbecilities.”
“At school they say I’m a bit odd,” I once admitted to Fermín. “Well, that’s good news. We’ll start worrying the day they tell you you’re normal.”
Every day I became more convinced that good literature has little or nothing to do with trivial fancies such as “inspiration” or “having something to tell” and more with the engineering of language, with the architecture of narrative, with the painting of textures, with the timbres and colors of the staging, with the cinematography of words, and the music that can be produced by an orchestra of ideas.
“Nobody succeeds without failing first,”
“One has to make one’s own mistakes, not other people’s. Do what you have to do and come back soon. Or whenever you can.”
“Writing is a profession that can be learned, but nobody can teach it. The day you understand what that means will be the day you start learning to be a writer.”
“To write is to rewrite,” he kept reminding me. “One writes for oneself, and one rewrites for others.”
“You’ll become who you believe you are.”
Sometimes it’s best to put your mind to work and exhaust it, rather than let it rest, in case it gets bored and starts eating you up alive.
