Damir > Damir's Quotes

“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Love is wiser than wisdom.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino

“Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: you have to learn the rhythm of respiration, acquire the pace; otherwise you stop right away.”
― Umberto Eco, Postscript to the Name of the Rose

“The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.”
― Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality

“What is love? There is nothing in the world, neither man nor Devil nor any thing, that I hold as suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does. Therefore, unless you have those weapons that subdue it, the soul plunges through love into an immense abyss.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows that he cannot say to her "I love you madly", because he knows that she knows (and that she knows he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still there is a solution. He can say "As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly". At this point, having avoided false innocence, having said clearly it is no longer possible to talk innocently, he will nevertheless say what he wanted to say to the woman: that he loves her in an age of lost innocence.”
― Umberto Eco

“Sometimes I look a the Moon, and I imagine that those darker spots are caverns, cities, islands, and the places that shine are those where the sea catches the light of the sun like the glass of a mirror...I would like to tell of war and friendship among the various parts of the body, the arms that do battle with the feet, and the veins that make love with the arteries or the bones with the marrow. All the stories I would like to write persecute me when I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, the little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful'.”
― Umberto Eco

“Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black.”
― Martin Amis, The Second Plane: September 11, 2001-2007

“In the half darkness I winked to my other self, my mad dictator, and congratulated him on his droll victory. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth flowing from Shosha's head to my face. What did I have to lose? Nothing more than what everyone loses anyway.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Shosha

“We all play chess with Fate as partner. He makes a move, we make a move. He tries to checkmate us in three moves, we try to prevent it. We know we can't win, but we're driven to give him a good fight.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Life is God's novel. Let him write it.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

“The wastepaper basket is the writer’s best friend. ”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

“What do these children do without storybooks?" Naftali asked.
And Reb Zebulun replied: "They have to make do. Storybooks aren't bread. You can live without them."
I couldn't live without them." Naftali said.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Naftali the Storyteller and His Horse, Sus: And Other Stories

“There are 500 reasons I write for children.... Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about the critics.... They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench their thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff.... They don't expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know that it is not in his power. Only the adults have such childish illusions.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

“We have to believe in free-will. We've got no choice.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

“When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer. ”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Night is a time of rigor, but also of mercy. There are truths which one can see only when it’s dark”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Teibele and her demon

“People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

“I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

“I believe in God but people are liars. It's those people who say they are appointed by God who I don't believe in.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Questo ti volevo dire. Ho rotto il nostro patto ma forse é stato meglio così. Ora basta però, non ti voglio rattristare. Mia madre mi ha detto che sei bellissima e io lo sapevo. Quando eravamo piccoli ero sicuro che saresti diventata miss Italia. P.s. Preparati, che quando passo da Bologna ti prendo e ti porto via.”
― Niccolò Ammaniti, I'll Steal You Away

“Even the most difficult things which you think you'll never get over you do get over, and in a trice you find they're behind you and you have to go on. New things await you.”
― Niccolò Ammaniti, I'll Steal You Away

“You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.”
― Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.”
― Hermann Hesse

“If I know what love is, it is because of you.”
― Hermann Hesse

“Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.”
― Hermann Hesse

“Three things can not hide for long: the Moon, the Sun and the Truth.”
― Gautama Buddha

“Some of us think holding on makes us strong but sometimes it is letting go”
― Herman Hesse