The Seamstress and the Wind Quotes

“Forgetting is like a great alchemy free of secrets, limpid, transforming everything to the present. In the end it makes our lives into this visible and tangible thing we hold in our hands, with no folds left hidden in the past.”
― César Aira, The Seamstress and the Wind

“The voice, for its part, has the peculiarity that when released it carries the weight of the body from which it has come; since that weight is erotic reality, lovers believe they can embrace words of love, they believe they can make them into a continuum of love that will last forever.”
― César Aira, The Seamstress and the Wind

“She belonged to the common type: without ever really thinking it over in detail, she had considered herself a woman like the rest, with no reason for anything to happen to her that didn’t also happen to all other women. It was as if this sort of thing happened to someone else, to an absolute someone else, which is to say, as if it didn’t happen to anyone.”
― César Aira, The Seamstress and the Wind

“No one leaves life anywhere, all lives seem to be portable. They are naturally so. To be practical about it and drop the metaphysics, having a life is equivalent to having business, affairs, interests. And how can anyone strip himself of all that? Very well. But then how did I do it?
I don’t know.
I’ve stood on the threshold of all the beauties, all the dangers. And the sums did not add up. The remainders did not remain, the multiplications were not multiplied, the divisions were not divided.”
― César Aira, The Seamstress and the Wind

“She was always losing customers; it was a miracle she had any left. New ones were always appearing, that was the thing. Her supernatural velocity attracted them, like moths to a candle.”
― César Aira, The Seamstress and the Wind