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September 14 - October 20, 2023
The memories we bury under mountains of silence are the ones that never stop haunting us.
the unexpected often goes hand in hand with the unwelcome,
“I’m doing this because I damn well want to,”
She would always remember that dawn for its cold grayness, as if winter had decided to tumble down without warning and sink Villa Mercedes in a lake of mist that emerged from the edge of the forest.
People don’t come here to live, they come here to die.”
“It’s not about whether you’re in the mood, it’s about whether you’ve got the balls.”
“Your relationship sounds more personal than professional, if you’ll allow my opinion.” “In my field one can’t exist without the other.”
“A hunter has to understand,” he said, “that at a critical moment in the hunt, the role of the prey and that of the hunter become confused. The hunt, the real hunt, is a duel between equals. You don’t know who you really are until you shed blood.”
Follow your instinct, not the procedure.
Perhaps, with his gray hair, his conscience had also grown, and this had ruined his ambitions.
“Certainty is reassuring, but one can only learn by doubting.
A legend is a lie that has been whipped up to explain a universal truth.
“That’s what comes from being well read. One already knows all the verses and all the tricks of fate.”
Life, some said, is a railway station where one almost always enters, or gets put into, the wrong carriage.
In time, even bad memories dress up for the occasion.
She and her pain were old rivals, veterans who know one another well, exploring one another mutually and sticking to the rules of the game.
This is a city of closed doors where everything depends on who has the key, who the key holder will allow through the door, and on what side of the door one will end up.
“The world isn’t the amoral place you’ve known until now, Alicia. The world is simply the reflection of those of us who make it up. In fact, the world is only what we make of it between us all. That’s why people like you or like me, who are born with a gift, have a responsibility to use it for the good of others.
As the narcotic began to freeze her blood, the city lights seemed to fade into a watery mantle, like watercolor stains sliding down a canvas. The traffic sounds seemed to reach her from afar.
A bad beginning makes a bad end,
She smiled and returned to the novel, feeling that she was returning home. She could have stayed there all day. Or all her life.
Experience had taught her that modesty always invited scrutiny.
“A painting is never finished. The trick is to know at what point to leave it unfinished.
A velvet sun was painting the streets with innocence.
Nothing is more surprising or frightening than what one already knows.
Truth is never perfect, never squares with all expectations. Truth always poses doubts and questions. Only lies are one hundred percent believable, because they don’t need to justify reality, they simply have to tell us what we want to hear.
“The eye sees; the camera observes,”
Happiness, or the closest to it any moderately intelligent creature can aspire to, spiritual peace, is what evaporates on the way between belief and knowledge.
the long avenue of mansions that flanked the route, deserted castles sheltered by small woods, fountains, and gardens of statues, where nobody was ever to be seen. Great fortunes are never at home.
“Don’t worry, Don Anacleto. The world is always the same,” Señor Sempere reassured him. “The truth is, it doesn’t wait for anyone, and races past you at the first hurdle. How about a toast for the past, the future, and those of us who are between the two?”
In this dog-eat-dog world, he thought, when you get old and even common sense hurts, a crumb of kindness or pity is a dish fit for the gods.
Vargas offered his friend a cigarette, but he declined. “What’s happened to us, Linares?” Linares shrugged. “Spain, I suppose.” “It could be worse. We could be in the bag.” “All in due time.”
When it comes to lying, what one must consider is not the plausibility of the fib but the greed, fear, and stupidity of the receiver. One never lies to people; they lie to themselves. A good liar gives fools what they want to hear and allows them to free themselves from the facts at hand and choose the level of self-delusion that fits their foolishness and moral turpitude. That’s the secret. Oldest trick in the world.”
When you’re young, you see the world as it should be, and when you’re old you start to see it as it really is. You’ll be cured of it eventually.”
“She’ll live. I’ve already seen her return from among the dead once before, and those who learn the trick never forget it. I speak from experience. To return from the dead is a bit like riding a bike, or unfastening a girl’s bra with a single hand. It’s all a question of getting the knack.”
“A war can’t be won without the infantry.”
He’d come to the conclusion that you never really know who you are until you learn to hate. And when you really hate, when you abandon yourself to that anger that burns you inside, that slowly consumes what little good you thought you had in your baggage, you do it secretly.
The man who hid no shadows in his heart.
The most sincere pain is experienced alone.
I think that bit by bit new details are emerging. Memory is like that. It likes to play tricks on us.”
In lost battles, the last defense is indifference.
An entire life devoted to medicine had taught Dr. Soldevila that the hardest illness to cure is habit.
The pleasure of the blank page, which at first always smells of mystery and promise, vanished as if by magic. As soon as one begins to place the first words on it, it becomes clear how in writing, as in life, the distance between intentions and results is much the same as that between the innocence with which one undertook the first and accepted the second.
“Daniel, bring out the bottle of strong brandy your father hides behind the Exemplary Lives of the Saints collection,”
Yet he believed that, like a stubborn toothache, fate didn’t let go of you until you faced it with courage. All the more so where love was concerned.
we all come into this world with a purpose, and mine was to contradict.
Books taught me to think, to feel, and to live a thousand lives.
in literature there is only one real theme: not what is narrated, but how it is narrated. The rest, he said, was decoration.
You only truly fall in love when you don’t realize it’s happening.
People live inside their hopes, but the landlord of fate is the devil.
