A Book of Memories Quotes

“if one could learn the most important things in life, one would still have to learn how to keep quiet about them.”
― Péter Nádas, A Book of Memories

“The harmony of two bodies expressed in this single touch, bridging their differences and bending their moral reserve, was as powerful and wild as
physical fulfillment, yet there was nothing false in this harmony, no
illusion created that just by touching, our bodies could express feelings
that rationality prevented us from making permanent; I might even say that
our bodies cooly preserved their good sense, scheming and keeping each
other in check, as if to say, I'll yield unreservedly to the madness of
the moment but only if and when you do the same; but this physical plea
for passion and reason, spontaneity and calculation, closeness and
distance, took our bodies past the point where, clinging to desire and
striving for the moment of gratification, they would seek a new and more complete harmony.”
― Peter Nadas, A Book of Memories

“my foolishness had me believe that i was the story, and this bleak cold night merely its setting, but in fact my real story played itself out almost independently of me or, more precisely, occurred parallel to my own little adventures.”
― Péter Nádas, A Book of Memories

“...in the final analysis one is incapable of total self-annihilation, either mental or physical, not even having taken cyanide, for even then it's the poison, or the rope, or the water, or the bullet that does the job...”
― Péter Nádas, A Book of Memories

“...our own barbaric civilization, in awe of the act of creation, does not respect creation at all.”
― Péter Nádas, A Book of Memories

“we remain children as long as we feel the urge to keep crossing this border and to learn.”
― Péter Nádas, A Book of Memories

“...fill the hollow so fully, so perfectly, that one can no longer tell
what is ours and what is hers...”
― Péter Nádas, A Book of Memories

“... it's no accident that poets so delight in singing of the connection between love and death, for never do we experience our body's autonomy so purely as when we fight for our lives or in the moment of love's consummation, when we experience our body in its most primeval form, with no history, no creator, obeying no law of gravity, without contour, able to see itself in no mirror, having no need for any of this, becoming a single, explosive dot of pure light in the infinity of our inner darkness...”
― Péter Nádas, A Book of Memories

“In reality there's no such thing as perfect symmetry or total sameness; a transitional balance between dissimilarities is the most we can hope for; although our scuffle wasn't at all serious, it did not turn into an embrace, for the same reason that he had pushed me away: up to that point, wishing to keep up the pretense of perfect symmetry, I had accepted the less comfortable position so he could rest comfortably in my arms, but that was like telling him he was the weaker one, which, in turn, was like telling him he wasn't as much of a man as he'd like me to believe, forgetting for the moment that letting him have the better position gave me much more pleasure; yet precisely because there is no perfect symmetry, only a striving for it, there can be no gesture without the need for another to complete it.”
― Péter Nádas, A Book of Memories