En la orilla Quotes

“Y bebo el agua salada del pozo que guarda mi sudor.”
― Rafael Chirbes, En la orilla

“We tend to think that people’s true nature comes out at decisive moments, when the going gets tough, when they’re pushed to the limit. The moment for heroes and saints. And yet, strange though it may seem, at such moments, human behavior is usually neither exemplary nor encouraging. The group who elbow their way to the head of the line where the concert tickets are being handed out; the spectators who flee the burning theater, trampling over the weaker members of the audience . . .”
― Rafael Chirbes, En la orilla

“In day-to-day living, you’re constrained by your kids, by your wife; if it wasn’t for them, you’d do all kinds of crazy things, but when you’re in really deep trouble, when you reach that final tipping point, the very opposite happens: it is precisely your wife and kids who make you do the crazy thing that, before, they seemed to be stopping you from doing.”
― Rafael Chirbes, En la orilla

“Sometimes it’s the biggest, heaviest things that are the easiest to move. Huge stones in the back of a truck, vans laden with heavy metals. And yet everything that’s inside you—what you think, what you want—all of which apparently weighs nothing—no strong man can lift that onto his shoulder and move it somewhere else. [. . .]”
― Rafael Chirbes, En la orilla

“Do you see how commercial obligations bind people more closely than love?”
― Rafael Chirbes, En la orilla

“As the poet says: We sing what we have lost. She’s”
― Rafael Chirbes, On the Edge

“panchitos, blacks,”
― Rafael Chirbes, On the Edge

“Far better to be in places where words do what you want them to and where blood doesn’t smell because it’s set down in ink on the page; history”
― Rafael Chirbes, On the Edge

“background. In”
― Rafael Chirbes, On the Edge

“Uno no es exactamente lo que come, como dicen los clásicos, y como yo mismo he dado por supuesto, sino que uno es, sobre todo, dónde come, y con quién come, y cómo nombra con propiedad lo que come, y el acierto con que elige en la carta lo más correcto y lo hace ante testigos, y uno es, muy especialmente, el que luego cuenta lo que come y con quién. Si sabes eso de alguien, sabes quién es el pájaro.”
― Rafael Chirbes, En la orilla