Anne HP > Anne's Quotes

“Simplemente no soy de este mundo... Yo habito con frenesí la luna. No tengo miedo de morir; tengo miedo de esta tierra ajena, agresiva... No puedo pensar en cosas concretas; no me interesan. Yo no sé hablar como todos. Mis palabras son extrañas y vienen de lejos, de donde no es, de los encuentros con nadie...
¿Qué haré cuando me sumerja en mis fantásticos sueños y no pueda ascender? Porque alguna vez va a tener que suceder. Me iré y no sabré volver. Es más, nos sabré siquiera que hay un "saber volver". No lo querré acaso.”
― Alejandra Pizarnik

“I am Cassandra—she who, without asking,
understood it all and still came to her fate,
I, Cassandra, full of visions,
who sees her own death without turning away,
and hears in the night the day that follows.”
― Gabriela Mistral, Madwomen: Poems of Gabriela Mistral

“Your now is not your forever.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“A veces escribir es un trabajo: trazar oblicuamente el camino de ciertas ideas que nos parece indispensable poner en la mesa. Pero otras es conceder lo que queda, aceptar el museo y contemplar el saldo en espera de la muerte, pedirle perdón al mar por lo que se jodió. Poner en la mesa nuestras cajitas y saber que lo que se acabó era también todo el universo.”
― Álvaro Enrigue, Hipotermia

“El resto de la América infinita todavía ni siquiera sospechaba que en los siguientes doscientos años decenas de culturas milenarias que habían florecido aisladas y sin contaminantes ni defensas se iría inexorablemente a la mierda. No que importe: nada importa. Se extinguen las especies, los hijos se van de casa, los amigos consiguen novias intratables, las culturas desaparecen, las lenguas, un día, se dejan de hablar; los que sobreviven se convencen de que eran los más aptos”
― Álvaro Enrigue, Morte improvvisa

“All things great are wound up with all things little.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Hoping is such hard work. It tires you out and you never seem to get any kind of reward. Hoping feels like you’re a balloon that has a pinhole that slowly leaks air.”
― Christopher Paul Curtis, The Mighty Miss Malone

“Inaction is a powerful choice”
― Angeline Boulley, Firekeeper’s Daughter

“When someone dies, everything about them becomes past tense. Except for the grief. Grief stays in the present. It’s even worse when you’re angry at the person. Not just for dying. But for how.”
― Angeline Boulley, Firekeeper's Daughter

“I am so tired. The weight of my expendability is crushing.”
― Angeline Boulley, Firekeeper's Daughter

“The everything remained like an unfinished poem, like something that switches off and we can't prevent it, we can't, then everything remained.”
― Marcial Gala, The Black Cathedral

“For a long time I searched for the black stone that cleanses the soul of death.”
― Tahar Ben Jelloun

“Save me from hatred, that destructive impulse, the poison that ravages the heart and liver. I must stop wanting to take revenge on other lives, on other minds; I must forget hatred, reject it, refuse to answer it with more hatred. I must rise above it. Help me to renounce this crippling bond, to leave without hindrance this body that no longer looks like one, but like a jumble of deformed bones; direct my eyes to other stones. This darkness suits me: when I look inside myself, I see more clearly the world, even if my feet are still freezing on this damp cement floor. The back of my neck hurts because I cannot stand up straight. No--I feel no pain. I am certain that I feel no pain. I do not feel anything any more. My prayer has been answered. I am not ill. I will never be, here, no matter how I suffer. O my God, I have learned from You that a healthy body teaches us about the beauty of the world. It is the echo of enchantment, produced by life and light. It is light. Light in life. When it is withdrawn from life, isolated and imprisoned in a black hole, it no longer echoes anything, it reflects nothing. Thanks to Your will, I shall never be extinguished.”
― Tahar Ben Jelloun, تلك العتمة الباهرة

“I have at least the whole of my life to answer a question: Who am I? And who is the other? A gust of wind at dawn? A motionless landscape? A trembling leaf? A coil of white smoke above a mountain? I write all these words and I hear the wind, not outside, but inside my head. A strong wind, it rattles the shutters through which I enter the dream.”
― Tahar Ben Jelloun, The Sand Child

“People say “sell your soul” like it’s easy. But your soul is yours and it’s not for sale. Even if you try, it’ll still be there, waiting for you to remember it.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Friday Black: NYT Bestselling Literary Satire – Urgent African American Stories About Systemic Racism

“A home is an origin story. A home is a thing to carry. A home is a wild field of energy that floods floods floods. Call me. Call me home.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“Some truly didn’t think about the fact that men and women were being murdered every day by the same government their children pledged allegiance to at school.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“Suck my dick, America.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars

“If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.”
― Audre Lorde

“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.”
― Audre Lorde

“A Litany for Survival

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children's mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours:

For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother's milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.”
― Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn: Poems

“Tenez!”
― Álvaro Enrigue, Sudden Death

“«¡No me asuste, general!»
«No se asuste usted», dijo el general en un tono tranquilo. «Váyase para México, aunque lo maten o aunque se muera. Y váyase ahora que todavía es joven, porque un día será demasiado tarde, y entonces no se sentirá ni de aquí ni de allá. Se sentirá forastero en todas partes, y eso es peor que estar muerto». Lo miró directo a los ojos, se puso la mano abierta en el pecho, y concluyó:
«Dígamelo a mí».”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, The General in His Labyrinth

“We kill time; time buries us.”
― Machado de Assis

“Mas a saudade é isto mesmo; é o passar e repassar das memórias antigas”
― Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro

“Matamos o tempo, o tempo nos enterra.”
― Machado de Assis, Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas

“(...) preferi dormir, que é um modo interino de morrer.”
― Machado de Assis, Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas

“Prazos largos são fáceis de subscrever; a imaginação os faz infinitos.”
― Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro

“O gato não nos afaga, afaga-se em nós.”
― Machado de Assis, Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas

“It's a shame that we have to choose between two such second-rate countries as the USSR and the USA.”
― Jorge Luis Borges