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“Say hello to your mother,” I murmur as I close the door in his face, hoping that the complete dissonance between my two sentences will be veiled by the might of millennial prejudice.
I am one of the multiple cogs that make the great universal illusion turn, the illusion according to which life has a meaning that can be easily deciphered.
“Life has meaning and we grown-ups know what it is” is the universal lie that everyone is supposed to believe.
People aim for the stars, and they end up like goldfish in a bowl. I wonder if it wouldn’t be simpler just to teach children right from the start that life is absurd.
no one seems to have thought of the fact that if life is absurd, being a brilliant success has no greater value than being a failure.
even if nothing has any meaning, the mind, at least, can give it a shot, don’t you think?
What is an aristocrat? A woman who is never sullied by vulgarity, although she may be surrounded by it.
“Politics,” she says. “A toy for little rich kids that they won’t let anyone else play with.”
God knows which one of us looks more the fool.
So if there is something on the planet that is worth living for, I’d better not miss it, because once you’re dead, it’s too late for regrets, and if you die by mistake, that is really, really dumb.
To be poor, ugly and, moreover, intelligent, condemns one, in our society, to a dark and disillusioned life, a condition one ought to accept at an early age.
What we know of the world is only the idea that our consciousness forms of it.
In our world, that’s the way you live your grown-up life: you must constantly rebuild your identity as an adult, the way it’s been put together it is wobbly, ephemeral, and fragile, it cloaks despair and, when you’re alone in front of the mirror, it tells you the lies you need to believe.
Is that the movement of the world? An infinitesimal lapse that has just succeeded in ruining the possibility of perfection forever?
To the rich, therefore, falls the burden of Beauty. And if they cannot assume it, then they deserve to die.
if there is one thing that poor people despise, it is other poor people.
That’s what the future is for: to build the present, with real plans, made by living people.
In a world full of fossils, the slightest movement of a pebble on the slope of the cliff is nearly enough to bring on a whole series of heart attacks—so
The son is less dangerous because he’s a real moron, but you never know: the capacity to do harm is often an item of family capital.
As for me, I implore fate to give me the chance to see beyond myself and truly meet someone.
“I have two matching night tables with two identical lamps,” I say, suddenly remembering. “Me too,” replies Manuela. She nods. “Maybe we’re all sick, with this too much of everything.”
have our civilizations become so destitute that we can only live in our fear of want? Can we only enjoy our possessions or our senses when we are certain that we shall always be able to enjoy them?
I have no children, I do not watch television and I do not believe in God—all paths taken by mortals to make their lives easier. Children help us to defer the painful task of confronting ourselves, and grandchildren take over from them. Television distracts us from the onerous necessity of finding projects to construct in the vacuity of our frivolous lives: by beguiling our eyes, television releases our mind from the great work of making meaning. Finally, God appeases our animal fears and the unbearable prospect that someday all our pleasures will cease. Thus, as I have neither future nor
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If you have but one friend, make sure you choose her well.
But if, in our world, there is any chance of becoming the person you haven’t yet become . . . will I know how to seize that chance, turn my life into a garden that will be completely different from my forebears’?
I may know that the world is an ugly place, I still don’t want to see it.
And then, a summer rain.
Living, eating, reproducing, fulfilling the task for which we were born, and dying: it has no meaning, true, but that’s the way things are.
We think we can make honey without sharing in the fate of bees, but we are in truth nothing but poor bees, destined to accomplish our task and then die.
“It is patently clear,” she says, “that you are very intelligent.” And since I am too taken aback to say anything else: “You have found a good hiding place.”
you have but one friend, make sure you choose her well.
If you want to heal Heal others And smile or weep At this happy reversal of fate
This morning I understand what it means to die: when we disappear, it is the others who die for us, for here I am, lying on the cold pavement and it is not the dying I care about; it has no more meaning this morning than it did yesterday. But never again will I see those I love, and if that is what dying is about, then it really is the tragedy they say it is.
Thinking back on it, this evening, with my heart and my stomach all like jelly, I have finally concluded, maybe that’s what life is about: there’s a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty, where time is no longer the same.
