Berta > Berta's Quotes

“I can be by myself because I'm never lonely; I'm simply alone, living in my heavily populated solitude, a harum-scarum of infinity and eternity, and Infinity and Eternity seem to take a liking to the likes of me.”
― Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude

“The secret of the mountain is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself: the mountains exist simply, which I do not. The mountains have no "meaning," they are meaning; the mountains are. The sun is round. I ring with life, and the mountains ring, and when I can hear it, there is a ringing that we share. I understand all this, not in my mind but in my heart, knowing how meaningless it is to try to capture what cannot be expressed, knowing that mere words will remain when I read it all again, another day.”
― Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

“I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list.”
― Susan Sontag

“To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.”
― Susan Sontag, On Photography

“Time exists in order that everything doesn’t happen all at once…and space exists so that it doesn’t all happen to you.”
― Susan Sontag, At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches

“It hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.”
― Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

“The shock of photographed atrocities wears off with repeated viewings, just as the surprise and bemusement felt the first time one sees a pornographic movie wear off after one sees a few more.”
― Susan Sontag

“Very early in my life it was too late.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Lover

“...as long as nothing happens between them, the memory is cursed with what hasn't happened.”
― Marguerite Duras, Blue Eyes, Black Hair

“Dance, when you're broken open.
Dance, if you've torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you're perfectly free.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“God weighs souls on a pair of scales. In one of the dishes is the soul, and in the other, the tears of those who weep for it. If nobody cries, the soul goes straight down to hell. If there are enough tears and they are sufficiently heartfelt, it rises up to heaven.”
― José Eduardo Agualusa, A General Theory of Oblivion