Juan Ocampo > Juan's Quotes

“Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“the evolution of sense, in a sense, is the evolution of non sense”
― Vladimir Nobokov

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“I cannot disobey something which I do not know and the reality of which I have the right to deny.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

“Look at this tangle of thorns.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Lolita, luz de mi vida, fuego de mis entrañas. Pecado mío, alma mía. Lo-li-ta: la punta de la lengua emprende un viaje de tres pasos paladar abajo hasta apoyarse, en el tercero, en el borde de los dientes. Lo. Li. Ta.
Era Lo, sencillamente Lo, por la mañana, cuando estaba derecha, con su metro cuarenta y ocho de estatura, sobre un pie enfundado en un calcetín. Era Lola cuando llevaba puestos los pantalones. Era Dolly en la escuela. Era Dolores cuando firmaba. Pero en mis brazos fue siempre Lolita.
¿Tuvo Lolita una precursora? Naturalmente que sí. En realidad, Lolita no hubiera podido existir para mí si un verano no hubiese amado a otra niña iniciática. En un principado junto al mar. ¿Cuándo? Aquel verano faltaban para que naciera Lolita casi tantos como los que yo tenía entonces. Pueden contar en que la prosa de los asesinos sea siempre elegante, vaya que lo sé.
Señoras y señores del jurado, la prueba número uno es lo que los serafines, los mal informados e ingenuos ángeles de majestuosas alas, envidiaron. Contemplen esta maraña de espinas.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“Every grain of experience is food for the greedy growing soul of the artist.”
― Anthony Burgess

“Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“How short lived knowledge is. When I was 20 I knew it all: now at 70 I can’t understand a thing”
― Macedonio Fernández

“Dealing with people, my friends, is really nothing more than a question of the price that one is willing to pay. The better you understand life, the more capital you build.”
― Gregor von Rezzori, An Ermine in Czernopol

“I could wish for nothing more than to die for a childish dream in which I truly believed.”
― Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Mandarins: Stories

“Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake.”
― Richard Sennett, The Craftsman

“Issac Stern rule: the better your technique, the more impossible your standards.”
― Richard Sennett, The Craftsman

“Only when you accept that one day you'll die can you let go, and make the best out of life. And that's the big secret. That's the miracle.”
― Gabriel Bá, Daytripper

“Man stands alone in the universe, responsible for his condition, likely to remain in a lowly state, but free to reach above the stars.”
― Walter Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre

“Success is no proof of virtue. In the case of a book, quick acclaim is presumptive evidence of a lack of substance and originality.”
― Walter Kaufmann

“Let people who do not know what to do with themselves in this life, but fritter away their time reading magazines and watching television, hope for eternal life.....The life I want is a life I could not endure in eternity. It is a life of love and intensity, suffering and creation, that makes life worth while and death welcome. There is no other life I should prefer. Neither should I like not to die. ”
― Walter Kaufmann

“The world doesn't make sense until you force it to.”
― Frank Miller

“DWIGHT:

Stay smart. Stay cool. It's time to prove to you're friends that you're worth a damn.
Sometimes that means dying.
Sometimes it means killing a whole lot of people.”
― Frank Miller, Sin City, Vol. 3: The Big Fat Kill

“The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.”
― Donald Barthelme, Come Back, Dr. Caligari

“Write about what you're afraid of.”
― Donald Barthelme

“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt.”
― Charles M. Schulz

“Happiness is a warm puppy.”
― Charles M. Schulz

“Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.”
― Ted Chiang, The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate

“Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.”
― Ted Chiang, The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate

“My message to you is this: pretend that you have free will. It's essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don't. The reality isn't important: what's important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“Deep down, Clark's essentially a good person... and deep down, I'm not”
― Jeph Loeb, Batman: Hush, Vol. 1

“para triunfar en la vida es preciso creer en algo, o sea estar, por definición, equivocado”
― Mario Levrero, El discurso vacío