Max > Max's Quotes

“Hoy quemé tu carta. La única carta que me escribiste. Y yo te he estado escribiendo, sin que tú lo sepas, día a día. A veces con amor, a veces con desolación, otras con rencor. Tu carta la conozco de memoria: catorce líneas, ochenta y ocho palabras, diecinueve comas, once puntos seguidos, diecisiete acentos ortográficos y ni una sola verdad.”
― José Emilio Pacheco, El principio del placer

“First, silence makes us pilgrims. Secondly, silence guards the fire within. Thirdly, silence teaches us to speak.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen

“But, said Lewis, myths are lies, even though lies breathed through silver.

No, said Tolkien, they are not.

...just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.

We have come from God (continued Tolkien), and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming a 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.

You mean, asked Lewis, that the story of Christ is simply a true myth, a myth that works on us in the same way as the others, but a myth that really happened? In that case, he said, I begin to understand.”
― Humphrey Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography

“Survival is the ability to swim in strange water.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“El día que te fuiste entendí que no te volvería a ver. Ibas teñida de rojo por el sol de la tarde, por el crepúsculo ensangrentado del cielo; Sonreías. Dejabas atrás un pueblo del que muchas veces me dijiste: ‘Lo quiero por ti; pero lo odio por todo lo demás, hasta por haber nacido en él’. Pensé: ‘No regresará jamás; no volverá nunca.”
― Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo

“Y debo decir que confío plenamente en la casualidad de haberte conocido. Que nunca intentaré olvidarte, y que si lo hiciera, no lo conseguiría. Que me encanta mirarte y que te hago mío con solo verte de lejos. Que adoro tus lunares y tu pecho me parece el paraíso. Que no fuiste el amor de mi vida, ni de mis días, ni de mi momento. Pero que te quise, y que te quiero, aunque estemos destinados a no ser.”
― Julio Cortázar

“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.”
― Charlie Chaplin

“Ni siquiera le robé el espacio a la tierra... me enterraron en tu misma sepultura y cupe muy bien en el hueco de tus brazos. Aquí en este rincón donde me tienes ahora.”
― Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo

“Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“Strange, how a moment of existence can cut so deeply into our being that while ages pass unnoticed, a brief love can structure and define the very topology of our consciousness ever after.”
― Steven L. Peck, A Short Stay in Hell

“Viewed from a distance, everything is beautiful.”
― Tacitus

“The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.”
― Tacitus

“Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, 'I am not the kind of person I want to be.' It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“I am lying in the same bed where my mother died so long ago; on the same mattress,
beneath the same black wool coverlet she wrapped us in to sleep. I slept beside her, her
little girl, in the special place she made for me in her arms.
I think I can still feel the calm rhythm of her breathing; the palpitations and sighs that
soothed my sleep. . . . I think I feel the pain of her death. . . . But that isn't true.
Here I lie, flat on my back, hoping to forget my loneliness by remembering those times.
Because I am not here just for a while. And I am not in my mother's bed but in a black box
like the ones for burying the dead. Because I am dead.
I sense where I am, but I can think. . .”
― Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo