Bas > Bas's Quotes

“I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”
― Albert Camus, L'Étranger

“Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Persian, Dilorom told me, had only one word for crying, whereas Old Uzbek had one hundred. Old Uzbek had words for wanting to cry and not being able to, for being caused to sob by something, for loudly crying like thunder in the clouds, for crying in gasps, for weeping inwardly or secretly, for crying ceaselessly in a high voice, for crying in hiccups, and for crying while uttering the sound 'hay hay.”
― Elif Batuman, The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

“You just go around getting hung up on all the least convenient things--and if the only obstacle in your way is a little extra work, then that's the wonderful gift right there.”
― Elif Batuman, The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

“I spent the next two weeks flopped on my grandmother's super-bourgeois rose-colored velvet sofa, consuming massive quantites of grapes, reading obsessively.”
― Elif Batuman, The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

“Every morning I called Aeroflot to ask about my suitcase. "Oh, it's you," sighed the clerk. "Yes, I have your request right here. Address: Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy's house. When we find the suitcase we will send it to you. In the meantime, are you familiar with our Russian phrase *resignation of the soul*?”
― Elif Batuman, The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

“Each work of criticism is supposed to build on the body of work, to increase the total sum of human understanding. It's not like filling your house with more and more beautiful wicker baskets. It's supposed to be cumulative - it believes in progress.”
― Elif Batuman, The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

“First my copy was sent back to me with a note: "Please call ASAP regarding portrayal of Cossacks as primitive monsters." It turned out that my copy was lacking in cultural sensitivity toward Cossacks. I tried to explain that, far from calling Cossacks primitive monsters, I was merely suggesting that others had considered Cossacks to be primitive monsters. The coordinator, however, said that this was my mistake: others didn't consider Cossacks to be primitive monsters; in fact, "Cossacks have a rather romantic image."

I considered quoting to her the entry for Cossack in Flaubert's Dictionary of Received ideas: "Eats tallow candles"; but then the burden of proof would still be on me to show that tallow candles are a primitive form of nourishment. Instead I adopted the line that the likelihood of any Cossacks actually attending the exhibit was very slim. But the editor said this wasn't the point, "and anyway you never know in California.”
― Elif Batuman, The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”
― Hannah Arendt

“Duty is what no-one else will do at the moment.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore

“There isn’t one kind of happiness, there’s all kinds. Decision is torment for anyone with imagination. When you decide, you multiply the things you might have done and now never can.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore

“Tilda cared nothing for the future, and had, as a result, a great capacity for happiness.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore

“If there's even one person who might be hurt by a decision, you should never make it.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore

“All distances are the same to those who don't meet.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore

“Richard was the kind of man who has two clean handkerchiefs on him at half past three in the morning.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore

“The barge anchors were unrecognisable as such, more like crustaceans, specimens of some giant type long since discarded by Nature, but still clinging to their old habitat, sunk in the deep pits they had made in the foreshore. But under the ground they were half rusted away. Dreadnought's anchor had come up easily enough when the salvage tug came to dispose of her. The mud which held so tenaciously could also give way in a moment, if conditions altered.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore

“Let’s say that matters hadn’t gone quite right with you, I mean personal matters, would you be able to find words to say exactly what was wrong?’ ‘I’m afraid so, yes, I would.’ ‘That might be useful, of course.’ ‘Like manufacturers’ instructions. In case of failure, try words.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore

“Mothers were the measure of safety, which meant that I was safer than Maeve. After our mother left, Maeve took up the job on my behalf but no one did the same for her.”
― Ann Patchett, The Dutch House

“After years of living in response to the past, we had somehow miraculously become unstuck, moving forward in time”
― Ann Patchett, The Dutch House

“It's an actual fucking library, and there's a body in it!”
― John Banville, Snow

“How strange a thing it was to be here, animate and conscious, on this ball of mud and brine as it whirled through the illimitable depths of space.”
― John Banville, Snow

“Dreams belong to each of us alone, just as pain does.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Testament of Mary

“Memory fills my body as much as blood and bones.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Testament of Mary

“if you want witnesses then I am one and I can tell you now, when you say that he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it. It was not worth it.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Testament of Mary

“I do not know why it matters that I should tell the truth to myself at night, why it should matter that the truth should be spoken at least once in the world. Because the world is a place of silence, the sky at night when the birds have gone is a vast silent place. Words will make the slightest difference to the sky at night. They will not brighten it or make it less strange. And the day too has its own deep indifference to anything that is said.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Testament of Mary

“I remember too much; I am like the air on a calm day as it holds itself still, letting nothing escape.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Testament of Mary

“If water can be changed into wine and the dead can be brought back, then I want time pushed back.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Testament of Mary

“The details of what I told him were with me all the years in the same way as my hands or my arms were with me.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Testament of Mary

“In the meantime, when I wake in the night, I want more. I want what happened not to have happened, to have taken another course.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Testament of Mary