Frida's Bed Quotes

“Bio si moja opsesija, moja fiksacija. tvoje je ime za mene bio sinonim za sreću.
I što je najgore, vjerovala sam čvrsto da imam pravo na tebe, na ljubav, na život. Ne, čovjek nema nikakva prava niti garancije, ni za što. On postoji, koprca se, manje ili više je usamljen, i to je sve.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Frida's Bed

“Uvijek zamišljamo da ćemo bliskim osobama sve stići reći i objasniti, pokazati kako ih razumijemo i volimo. Iznenadna smrt nepravedna je i za onog koji ostaje.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Frida's Bed

“A ipak, trebao mi je čitav život da shvatim kako svi ljudi nisu jednaki i kako čine samo ono što mogu, da daju samo koliko imaju - i da je to dragocjeno.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Frida's Bed

“U ljubavi sam vidjela spas. Ljubav je bila moja religija. Čovjek valjda ima potrbu izmisliti nešto poput boga. što je drugo moglo slijediti nego još veće razočaranje? Jer spasa nema.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Frida's Bed

“Na koncu konca, što je ljubav? Sad mi se čini da je to tek riječ za čitav niz osjećaja, od nježnosti do solidarnosti i strasti. Jer ne treba zaboraviti da je jezik neprecizan instrument, za razliku od slikarstva ili muzike. Ljubav je zajednički nazivnik, obična košara u koju čovjek trpa svašta. Svaštara, dakle.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Frida's Bed

“Svatko je dužan napraviti najbolje što može od onoga što ga je zapalo, jer smisao života je upravo življenje samo. Postojati, usprkos svemu. Osjećati, gledati, sudjelovati. Veseliti se. Nije na dana druga šansa, drugi život.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Frida's Bed

“Usamljenost je bila gora od boli, pomislila je, usamljenost u koju ju je bol zarobila i na koju je bila osuđena čitavog života.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Frida's Bed

“Vjerovala sam da ljubav može uskrsnuti i mrtve.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Frida's Bed

“Svatko je dužan napraviti najbolje što može od onoga što ga je zapalo jer smisao života je upravo življenje samo. Postojati, usprkos svemu. Osjećati, gledati, sudjelovati. Veseliti se. Nije nam dana druga šansa, drugi život.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Frida's Bed

“Sjećam se kad smo kao djeca o tome zajedno čitale ležeći u krevetu i nismo mogle vjerovati da kosa i nokti rastu još danima nakon smrti jer su još uvijek živi. Što je smrt, pitala si me, kada je čovjek, zapravo, mrtav? Sada ti mogu odgovoriti: biološke funkcije nisu važne. Važan je smisao. Smrt je kad ti od tvog života ne ostane više ništa, zapravo ti je svejedno da li još dišeš i rastu li ti kosa i nokti. Ti ionako više ne postojiš. Zato, obriši suze, Kitty. Odlazim u miru jer više nisam ja. Pogledaj samo moje posljednje slike i sve će ti biti jasno. A i zbog toga što je briga za mene postala pretežak i besmislen teret. Ja sam samo malo ubrzala taj odlazak, tek toliko da ja (a ne ona!) budem ta koja će odlučiti o tom trenutku.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Frida

“Hoe moet ik het hun duidelijk maken, vroeg ze zich af. Hoe moet ik hun vertellen dat alle dagelijkse handelingen, opstaan, wassen, lopen, zitten – soms kon ze van de pijn niet eens zitten – een enorme, voor anderen niet te bevatten krachtinspanning van mij vergen. De lichamelijke kracht die het haar kostte kon ze niet overbrengen, werd anderen pas duidelijk op de momenten dat ze volledig instortte. Ze dacht dat het onbegrip waarmee ze te maken had haar eigen schuld was. Ze verweet zichzelf dat ze zich sterker voordeed dan ze was. De prijs die ze voor die houding betaalde was dat de mensen gewend waren geraakt aan een sterke vrouw, een vrouw die alles alleen kon, geen hulp nodig had en zelfs anderen hielp. Dat vond ze fijn, maar vaak zakte ze van vermoeidheid in elkaar.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Frida's Bed

“She was convinced the demonic pain she had suffered in her leg as a child had been in some sort of preparation for the accident. Engraved in her memory was how she had been left speechless by the first attack. She had yet to accept that pain cannot be expressed in words but only in inarticulate screams. It took time before she could put brush to canvas, and still more time before she could paint pictures that screamed. In place of the screams themselves. In place of verbal descriptions. She owed it to her father, she thought, to the frantic look in his eyes which she would never forget, and to his words: 'Tell me, tell me!”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Frida's Bed

“I know now that everything after the accident was merely a tactic to indulge in escapism and self-delusion. When you are hit by a streetcar that almost smashes you to a pulp, when you experience your own end...there is no recovery, only temporary respite, she thought.

Pain made me aware of my body. My body made me aware of deterioration and death. That awareness made me old. My death sentence may have been deferred, but I now had to live with a twofold realization. Not only was I going to die—there was nothing unusual about that except that I was made to realize it at a tender age—but I knew exactly what that meant. Because I had already been through it. Unlike other condemned people for whom death is an abstraction because they have no idea what really awaits them, my stay of death came with a constant reminder, the presence of pain.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Frida's Bed

“It is not true that you feel something when you are in an accident. There is no feeling, no thought. You do and you do not exist, like a particle of dust swirling in the air. You see the blue sky and you are part of it, you are a part of the air, the water, the greenery in the park. You drift in a silence where you cannot even hear the beating of your own heart. Isn't that the experience of nothingness?”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Frida's Bed

“And then came the pain. First in her leg, as if something had sunk its teeth into it. A huge beast, a dog, maybe. It locked its jaws onto her limb and tore at the muscles with its teeth. She screamed, that was all she could do, scream. She could not describe the feeling of having her body ripped apart. She remembered her father's despair, his face as he leaned over her bed, and his words: What is it, tell me, what is it? As she writhed in pain, soaked in her own sweat, Don Guillermo, her kind, good father, waited for her to tell him. For an explanation. A meaningful verbalization of this horror, so that he could understand what was happening to his child. Otherwise, how could he help her? Because her frenzied cries were not enough. Pain needs to be articulated, communicated. It needs a kind of dialogue. It needs words. But only screams and shrieks of pain escaped from the child's lips.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Frida's Bed

“The principal difference between her "seductive" and her other self-portraits was the absence of self-awareness in the former and its strong presence in the latter. With time, she became brutally direct. In her later self-portraits she was no longer beautiful, merely odd-looking. She did not seduce, she simply drew attention to herself. Her face became hard, serious. The pronounced cheekbones and heavy eyebrows looks as if they had been carved out of stone. The stern black eyes looked either straight through or straight past the viewer. She deliberately exaggerated the brutality of her self-portraits. She was saying: Look at me, I'm alive and it hurts. These self-portraits were like attestations to her existence: one, two, three, four...Exhibitionism, they said. But for her, painting self-portraits was a kind of magical rite, a kind of exorcism.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Frida's Bed