Blanco nocturno Quotes

“My mother says that reading is thinking,’ Sofia said. ‘Not that we read and then we think, but rather that we think something and then we read it in a book as if it were written by us, although it’s not written by us. Rather, someone in another country, in another place, in the past, writes it like a thought that hasn’t been thought yet, until, by chance, always by chance, we find the book that clearly expresses what had been, confusingly, not yet thought by us. Not every book, of course, but certain books are destined for us, certain books seem like objects of our own thoughts. A book for each one of us. To find it, there must be a series of accidentally interrelated events, until in the end you see the light you’re looking for, without even knowing you were looking for it…”
― Ricardo Piglia, Blanco nocturno

“The idea of a small circle, of an exalted and loyal sect, except with a traitor infiltrated at its core, an informant who's not foreign to the sect, but constitutes an essential part of its structure---this was the true organizational form of any small society. One must act knowing that there's a traitor infiltrated in the ranks.”
― Ricardo Piglia, Blanco nocturno

“People accused him of being unreal, of not having his feet on the ground. But he'd been thinking, the imaginary wasn't the same as the unreal. The imaginary was the possible, that which is not yet. This projection toward the future contained -- at the same time -- both what exists and what doesn't exist. Two poles that continually change places. And the imaginary was this changing of places. He'd been thinking.”
― Ricardo Piglia, Blanco nocturno

“Death is a terrifying experience... It threatens, with its corrosive power, our possibility of living a humane life. There are two kinds of experiences that can protect those---those able to turn to them---from the terror of the danger of death. One is the certainty of truth, the continuous awakening toward the understanding of the 'ineluctable need for truth,' without which a good life is not possible. The other is the resolute and profound illusion that life has meaning and that the meaning of life is found in performing good deeds.”
― Ricardo Piglia, Blanco nocturno

“Pero cuando estaba con una mujer, y le gustaba el modo que tenía de hablar, se la llevaba a la cama por el entusiasmo que le provocaba verla usar el pretérito perfecto del indicativo, como si a presencia del pasado en el presente justificara cualquier pasión.”
― Ricardo Piglia, Blanco nocturno

“I would have liked to have warned Tony not to come around here," Bravo said. He uses the pluperfect of the subjunctive, Renzi thought. He was so tired these were the kind of thoughts that popped into his head, thoughts once typical for him, when he was in college and he used to spend his time analyzing grammatical forms and verbal conjugations. Sometimes he wouldn't understand what people were telling him because he'd get distracted analyzing syntactical structures as if he were a philologist enraged by the distorted uses of contemporary language. Recently it has been happening less frequently to him. But sometimes, when he was with a women and he liked her way of speaking, he'd suddenly want to sleep with her because he was so excited by her use of the perfect preterit indicative. As if the presence of the past in the present justified just about any passion.”
― Ricardo Piglia, Blanco nocturno

“Perdition and evil make life fun, but conflicts eventually arise.”
― Ricardo Piglia, Blanco nocturno

“La ética es como el amor. Se vive en presente, las consecuencias no importan. Si uno piensa en el pasado es porque ya perdió la pasión...”
― Ricardo Piglia, Blanco nocturno