Beatriz Baptista > Recent Status Updates

meu deus acabei a primeira parte … 5/5 ⭐️

“People aren't overcome by situations or outside forces; defeat invades from within, I thought.”

"It was all your imagination. And imagination is sometimes worse than reality.”

+ “I think that's great. I wouldn't mind that kind of life. Me, when I'm utterly exhausted by it all, when my skin breaks out, on those lonely evenings when I call my friends again and again and nobody's home, then I despise my own life -my birth, my upbringing, everything. I feel only regret for the whole thing.”

+ “Everyone lives the way she knows best. What I mean by "their happiness" is living a life untouched as much as possible by the knowledge that we are really, all of us, alone. That's not a bad thing. Dressed in their aprons, their smiling faces like flowers, learning to cook, absorbed in their little troubles and perplexities, they fall in love and marry.” +

“Those women lived their lives happily. They had been taught, probably by caring parents, not to exceed the boundaries of their happiness regardless of what they were doing. But therefore they could never know real joy. Which is better? Who can say?” +

“To the extent that I had come to understand that despair does not necessarily result in annihilation, that one can go on as usual in spite of it, I had become hardened. Was that what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly
ambiguities? I didn't like it, but it made it easier to go on.”

“I felt that I was the only person alive and moving in a world brought to a stop.”

“Call the lawyer, okay? In any case, I've left everything to you except the club. Isn't it great being an only child?”

“You've been on my mind the whole time. That's the truth. All the time. But somehow I just couldn't call you. I was afraid that telling you would make it all real.”

“As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won't let my spirit be destroyed.”

“There are many days when all the awful things that happen make you sick at heart, when the path before you is so steep you can't bear to look. Not even love can rescue a person from that.”

“I'd never see my own grandmother again. Never again. I don't care for the loaded sentimentality of those words or for the feeling of limitation they impose. But just then they struck me with an unforgettable intensity and authority. I intended to think them over dispassionately.”

“The brat! I, too, had acted that way when I was tired. You'll regret it, I thought, talking to your grandmother that way.”

“When was it I realized that, on this truly dark and solitary path we all walk, the only way we can light is our own? Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely. Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time. I've always lived with that knowledge rooted in my being (…)”

“The space that cannot be filled, no matter how cheerfully a child and an old person are living together -- the deathly silence that, panting in a corner of the room, pushes its way in like a shudder. I felt it very early, although no one told me about it.”

“To live alone with an old person is terribly nerve-racking, and the healthier he or she is, the more one worries. Actually, when I lived with my grandmother this didn't occur to me; I enjoyed it. But looking back, I can't help thinking that deep down I was always, at all times, afraid: "Grandma's going to die.””

“Maybe all I had been hoping for was a bed in which to be able to stop thinking, just for a little while, about what happened before and what would happen in the future. I was too sad to be able to sleep in the same bed with anyone; that would only make the sadness worse. But here was a kitchen, some plants, someone sleeping in the next room, perfect quiet… this was the best.”

“He struck just the right note, neither cold nor oppressively kind.”

“I was tied by blood to no creature in this world. I could go anywhere, do anything. It was dizzying. Suddenly, to see that the world was so large, the cosmos so black. The unbounded fascination of it, the unbounded loneliness. For the first time, these days, I was touching it with these hands, these eyes. I've been looking at the world half-blind, I thought.”

Prefácio:

“Growth and the overcoming of obstacles are inscribed on a person's soul. If I have become any better at fighting my daily battles, be they violent or quiet, I know it is only thanks to my many friends and acquaintances.”

“Hear me out, though. There's no beautiful world where everyone thinks the same way and they all understand each other perfectly. It doesn't exist. You think it does, but it's not real. When you really look at what's going on, everyone's living in their own world.”

“What is dying anyway? I let this impossible question fill the darkness of my bedroom. I thought about how somebody was always dying somewhere, at any given moment. This isn't a fable or a joke or an abstract idea. People are always dying. It's a perfect truth. No matter how we live our lives, we all die sooner or later.”

“I found myself thinking more about suicide. At first, suicide was just a word, a vague idea separate from reality. It pointed at a way that other people chose to die, people I didn't even know. But once the word became my own, it took on the strangest shape. I could feel it growing deep inside of me. Suicide wasn't only something that happened strangers. I could make it happen, if I wanted to.”

And no matter what they do, we come to school each day, which makes them even more scared. (…) But we're not just playing by their rules. This is our will. We let them do this. It's almost like we chose this. That's all the more reason why they can't leave us alone. They're so scared, so terrified, and there's nothing they can do to stop it."