Los enamoramientos Quotes

“La gente empieza viendo una cosa y acaba viendo la contraria. Empieza amando y acaba odiando, o sintiendo indiferencia y después adorando. Nunca logramos estar seguros de qué va a sernos vital ni de a quién vamos a dar importancia. Nuestras convicciones son pasajeras y endebles, hasta las que consideramos más fuertes.También nuestros sentimientos.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“What happened is the least of it. It’s a novel, and once you’ve finished a novel, what happened in it is of little importance and soon forgotten. What matters are the possibilities and ideas that the novel’s imaginary plot communicates to us and infuses us with, a plot that we recall far more vividly than real events and to which we pay far more attention.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“We cannot know what time will do to us with its fine, indistinguishable layers upon layers, we cannot know what it might make of us. It advances stealthily, day by day and hour by hour and step by poisoned step, never drawing attention to its surreptitious labours, so respectful and considerate that it never once gives us a sudden prod or a nasty fright. Every morning, it turns up with its soothing, invariable face and tells us exactly the opposite of what is actually happening: that everything is fine and nothing has changed, that everything is just as it was yesterday--the balance of power--that nothing has been gained and nothing lost, that our face is the same, as is our hair and our shape, that the person who hated us continues to hate us and the person who loved us continues to love us.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“... I had stayed still and let the days pass, which is the best way to allow things in the real world to dissolve or break down, although they remain forever in our thoughts and in our knowledge, solid and putrid and stinking to high heaven. But that is bearable and we can live with it. Who doesn't carry something of that nature around with them?”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“Some people think that being in love or infatuated is a modern invention that appears only in novels. Be that as it may, it nevertheless exists, the invention, the word, and our capacity for such a feeling.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“It’s true that when we get caught in the spider’s web—between the first chance event and the second—we fantasize endlessly and are, at the same time, willing to make do with the tiniest crumb, with hearing him—as if he were the time itself that exists between those two chance events—smelling him, glimpsing him, sensing his presence, knowing that he is still on our horizon, from which he has not entirely vanished, and that we cannot yet see, in the distance, the dust from his fleeing feet.”
― Javier Marías, The Infatuations

“For me that's the only way of understanding a particular term that everyone here bandies about quite happily, but which clearly can't be quite that straight forward because it doesn't exist in many languages, only in Italian and Spanish, as far as I know, but then again, I don't know that many languages. Perhaps in German too, although I can't be sure: el enamoramiento--the state of falling or being in love, or perhaps infatuation. I'm referring to the noun, the concept; the adjective, the condition, are admittedly more familiar, at least in French, although not in English, but there are words that approximate that meaning ... We find a lot of people funny, people who amuse and charm us and inspire affection and even tenderness, or who please us, captivate us, and can even make us momentarily mad, we enjoy their body and their company or both those things, as is the case for me with you and as I've experienced before with other women, on other occasions, although only a few. Some become essential to us, the force of habit is very strong and ends up replacing or even supplanting almost everything else. It can supplant love, for example, but not that state of being in love, it's important to distinguish between the two things, they're easily confused, but they're not the same ... It's very rare to have a weakness, a genuine weakness for someone, and for that someone to provoke in us that feeling of weakness.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“Lo que pasó es lo de menos. Es una novela, y lo que ocurre en ellas da lo mismo y se olvida, una vez terminadas. Lo interesante son las posibilidades e ideas que nos inoculan y traen a través de sus casos imaginarios, se nos quedan con mayor nitidez que los sucesos reales y los tenemos más en cuenta.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“We do tend to believe things while we're hearing or reading them. Afterwards, it's another matter, when the book is closed and the voice stops speaking.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“The certainty that someone will never come back," the narrator muses of the dead, "never speak again, never take another step…will never look at us or look away. I don't know how we bear it, or how we recover.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“...cuando alguien muere, pensamos que ya se ha hecho tarde para cualquier cosa, para todo —más aún para esperarlo—, y nos limitamos a darlo de baja. También a nuestros allegados, aunque nos cueste mucho más y los lloremos, y su imagen nos acompañe en la mente cuando caminamos por las calles y en casa, y creamos durante mucho tiempo que no vamos a acostumbrarnos. Pero desde el principio sabemos —desde que se nos mueren— que ya no debemos contar con ellos, ni siquiera para lo más nimio, para una llamada trivial o una pregunta tonta ('¿Me he dejado ahí las llaves del coche?', ¿A qué hora salían hoy los niños?'), para nada. Nada es nada. En realidad es incomprensible, porque supone tener certidumbres y eso está reñido con nuestra naturaleza: la de que alguien no va a venir más, ni a decir más, ni a dar un paso ya nunca —para acercarse ni para apartarse—, ni a mirarnos, ni a desviar la vista. No sé cómo lo resistimos, ni cómo nos recuperamos. No sé cómo nos olvidamos a ratos, cuando el tiempo ya ha pasado y nos ha alejado de ellos, que se quedaron quietos.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“We don't object to our date of birth, so why object to our date of death, which is just as much a matter of chance.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“Everything becomes a story and ends up drifting about in the same sphere, and then it's hard to differentiate between what really happened and what is pure invention. Everything becomes a narrative and sounds fictitious even if it's true.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“Fiction has the ability to show us what we don’t know and what doesn’t happen.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“The bad thing about terrible misfortunes, the kind that tear us apart and appear to be unendurable, is that those who suffer them believe or almost demand that the world should end right there, and yet the world pays no heed and carries on regardless and even tugs at the sleeve of the person who suffered the misfortune, I mean, it won’t just let them depart this world the way a disgruntled spectator might leave the theatre, unless the unfortunate person kills him or herself.”
― Javier Marías, The Infatuations

“We don’t care about humiliating ourselves to ourselves, after all, no one is going to judge us and there are no witnesses.”
― Javier Marías, The Infatuations

“There are people who can make us laugh even when they don't intend to, largely because their very presence pleases us, and so it's easy enough to set us off, simply seeing them and being in their company and hearing them is all it takes, even if they're not saying anything very extraordinary or are even deliberately spouting nonsense, which we nevertheless find funny.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“When you don’t know what to believe, when you’re not prepared to play the amateur detective, then you get tired and dismiss the entire business, you let it go, you stop thinking and wash your hands of the truth or of the whole tangled mess—which comes to the same thing. The truth is never clear, it’s always a tangled mess. Even when you get to the bottom of it. But in real life almost no one needs to find the truth or devote himself to investigating anything, that only happens in puerile novels.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“Unlikely truths are useful and life is full of them, far more than the very worst of novels, no novel would ever dare give houseroom to the infinite number of chances and coincidences that can occur in a single lifetime, let alone all those that have already occurred and continue to occur. It's quite shameful the way reality imposes no limits on itself.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“Tendemos a desejar que ninguém morra e nada termine daquilo que nos acompanha e é nosso amado costume, e não vemos que a única coisa que mantém os costumes intactos é que eles nos sejam suprimidos de repente, sem desvio nem evolução possíveis, sem que nos abandonem nem nós os abandonemos. O que dura deteriora-se e acaba por apodrecer, aborrece-nos, vira-se contra nós, satura-nos, cansa-nos.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“Mes norime, kad visa tai, kas mums patinka, niekada nesibaigtų ir mums brangūs žmonės niekada nemirtų. Bet nesuprantame, kad iš tikrųjų išsaugome tai, ką mylime, tik tuomet, kai iš mūsų tai atimama, ir atimama netikėtai, negailestingai ir negrįžtamai. Tada tas, kuris atimtas, daugiau nebesikeičia ir visada mums lieka toks, kokį mylėjome. Tai, ką turime, ilgainiui praranda šviežumą ir aromatą, įkyri, varo nuobodulį, vargina ir netgi erzina. O kiek tokių, be kurių neįsivaizduojame savo gyvenimo, dingo iš horizonto, kiek nutraukė su mumis santykius, su kiek žmonių mes patys liovėmės bendrauti, kartais net be jokios akivaizdžios priežasties? Vieninteliai, kurie visada pasilieka su mumis, kurie niekada nepaveda ir neišduoda – tai tie, kuriuos iš mūsų kas nors atėmė. Vieninteliai, su kuriais niekada neišsiskiriame – tai tie, kurie mus paliko prieš mūsų valią. Jie mus paliko kai to visai nesitikėjome, todėl nesuspėjo mūsų nuvilti arba nustoti patikti, jų netekę mes puolame į neviltį, nes esame įsitikinę: su jais būtume galėję būti kartu dar labai ilgai, galbūt net visada. Tai – nesusipratimas, nors jį galima paaiškinti. Jeigu jie būtų su mumis pasilikę ilgiau, viskas būtų galėję pasikeisti. Tai, kas mums atrodė laimė, rytoj galėtų virsti kančia. „”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“What remains mysterious, or even enigmatic are those two words "nothing more," "pas davantage" in French.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“He must have been one of those men who doesn't really notice such things and leaves it to others to sort out any awkwardness or imperfections. This is not because they are thoughtless or because they consider themselves too high and might, it's simply that their brains don't register these practicalities or the world around them.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“Para qué esto y para qué lo otro, para qué el dinero, o un negocio y su urdimbre, para qué una casa y una biblioteca, para qué salir y trabajar y hacer proyectos, para qué tener hijos y para qué hacer nada. Nada dura lo bastante porque todo se acaba, y una vez acabado resulta que nunca fue bastante, aunque durara cien años.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“se habrían elegido espontáneamente —no por deber conyugal, ni por comodidad, ni por hábito, ni por lealtad siquiera— como compañero o acompañante, amigo, interlocutor o cómplice, en la seguridad de que, fuera lo que fuese lo que aconteciera o se diese, o lo que hubiera que contar o escuchar, siempre sería menos interesante o divertido con un tercero. Sin ella en el caso de él, sin él en el caso de ella. Había camaradería, y sobre todo convencimiento.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“Perhaps it was his wife who mainly made him laugh, for there are people who can make us laugh even when they don’t intend to, largely because their very presence pleases us, and so it’s easy enough to set us off, simply seeing them and being in their company and hearing them is all it takes, even if they’re not saying anything very extraordinary or are even deliberately spouting nonsense, which we nevertheless find funny.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“Es otro de los inconvenientes de padecer una desgracia: al que la sufre los efectos le duran mucho más de lo que dura la paciencia de quienes se muestran dispuestos a escucharlo y acompañarlo, la incondicionalidad nunca es muy larga si se tiñe de monotonía”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“We live quite happily with a thousand unresolved mysteries that occupy our minds for ten minutes in the morning and are then forgotten without leaving so much as a tremor of grief, not a trace.”
― Javier Marías, The Infatuations

“there are so many unpunished crimes in the world; indeed, they cover an area so vast, so ancient, so broad and wide that, up to a point, what do we care if a millimetre more is added to it?”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos

“Why do you think politicians send soldiers to the wars they declare, if, of course, they still go to the bother of declaring them. . . . mediation, keeping a distance from the actual events and being privileged enough not to have to witness them.”
― Javier Marías, Los enamoramientos