Kamchatka Quotes

“I know it doesn't sound logical but that's the way it is ' said papá. 'There are people who try to control the people they love or try to make them feel insecure or inferior or unworthy. They can be very hurtful but they're the sad people. They're afraid of being abandoned they're afraid of not being loved.' pg 116”
― Marcelo Figueras, Kamchatka

“If life was a movie and someone asked you what kind of a movie it was the best answer would be: it's a movie that makes you laugh and cry at the same time. Grandpa knew that.”
― Marcelo Figueras, Kamchatka

“I like to believe that we are more alike in our positive experiences than in our negative ones that what binds us is stronger than what separates us.”
― Marcelo Figueras, Kamchatka

“Time is weird. That much is obvious. Sometimes I think everything happens at once, which is anything but obvious and even weirder. I feel sorry for people who brag about 'living in the moment'; they're like people who come into the cinema after the film has started or people who drink Diet Coke—they're missing out on the best part. I think time is like the dial on a radio. Most people like to settle on a station with a clear signal and no interference. But that doesn't mean you can't listen to two or even three stations at the same time; it doesn't mean synchrony is impossible. Until quite recently, people believed it was impossible for a universe to fit inside two atoms, but it fits. Why dismiss the idea that on time's radio you can listen to the entire history of humanity simultaneously?”
― Marcelo Figueras, Kamchatka

“When you're a kid, the world can be bounded in a nutshell. In geographical terms, a child's universe is a space that comprises home, school and—possibly—the neighbourhood where your cousins or your grandparents live. In my case, the universe sat comfortably within a small area of Flores that ran from the junction of Boyacá and Avellaneda (my house), to the Plaza Flores (my school). My only forays beyond the area were when we went on holiday (to Córdoba or Bariloche or to the beach) or occasional, increasingly rare visits to my grandparents' farm in Dorrego, in the province of Buenos Aires.

We get our fist glimpse of the big wide world from those we love unconditionally. If we see our elders suffer because they cannot get a job, or see them demoted, or working for a pittance, our compassion translates these observations and we conclude that the world outside is cruel and brutal. (This is politics.) If we hear our parents bad-mouthing certain politicians and agreeing with their opponents, our compassion translates these observations and we conclude that the former are bad guys and the latter are good guys. (This is politics.) If we observe palpable fear in our parents at the very sight of soldiers and policemen, our compassion translates our observations and we conclude that, though all children have bogeymen, ours wear uniforms. (This is politics.)”
― Marcelo Figueras, Kamchatka

“What had killed them became the air that they breathed.
Perhaps this ability that life has to turn things to its advantage doesn't mean much to you. But let me tell you that, in my world, it has meant a lot.”
― Marcelo Figueras, Kamchatka

“This is the problem about thinking about something else to take your mind off something. It works for a little while, but in the end you always come back to the thing you were trying not to think about, only now whatever it was is worse.”
― Marcelo Figueras, Kamchatka

“I remember that one Holy Week, the magazine I got every Thursday, Anteojito, came with a free poster depicting the Stations of the Cross. I burned the poster and flushed the ashes down the toilet to dispose of the evidence. The idea that I was supposed to pin this graphic depiction of torture and death on my wall seemed to me as obscene as if someone had suggested decorating my room with pictures of the inner workings of Auschwitz.”
― Marcelo Figueras, Kamchatka

“Diverting a river is easier than facing the truth; Cyrus did not want to acknowledge the fact that his horse would not have drowned if he had not forced it to try and cross the river.”
― Marcelo Figueras, Kamchatka

“I never saw a sky like the sky over Dorrego - so vast, so black, with stars in an infinite array of size and brilliance. Maybe it seemed vast because the Earth didn’t get in the way: the countryside around Dorrego is flat, there are no big cities to blot out the stars with their own clouds of gas, their artificial starlight. (Cities have a terrible tendency to try and imitate starlight, you only have to see them from a plane.) …
Before Dorrego, I had always thought of the sky as a black screen on which a handful of scattered stars twinkled vaguely, but were no more enthralling than the ceiling of the Cine Opera. Dorrego revealed the other sky, the boundless dome that sends you rushing to a dictionary for synonyms for ‘infinite’; stars that clustered, not into constellations, but into galaxies; stars like swarms of bees which suggested not stillness or permanence but movement, the trail of something, of someone that passed just now, a moment ago, when you weren’t looking. A sky that seemed to suddenly reveal the meaning of all things: Man’s need to create language to describe it, geography to explain his place within it, biology to remind him that he is a newcomer in this universe, and history, because everything is written in the sky above Dorrego.”
― Marcelo Figueras, Kamchatka

“Every language is a way of imagining the world. English, for example, is sharp and precise. Spanish tends to be baroque. It is obvious that they have adapted to the needs of the peoples who speak them, because both have stood the test of time. From time to time, academics accept new words that have already been tested in everyday speech, or accept as correct constructions they previously considered ungrammatical. These new words are leaves on a tree that is already lush with foliage, and the new constructions are the pruning, which helps it to grow; but the tree is still the same tree.”
― Marcelo Figueras, Kamchatka

“Credo, comunque, che il motivo principale per cui oggi si combattono i maestri a colpi di miseri stipendi e improbe fatiche sia un altro, più meschino e dunque inconfessato. Un maestro è una persona che ha deciso di dedicare la vita ad accendere in altri la scintilla che hanno acceso in lui da bambino; a restituire il bene ricevuto, moltiplicandolo. Per i potenti di questo mondo, che da bambini hanno ricevuto tutto e ora si prendono tutto, la logica di una simile decisione è oscena, uno specchio in cui non vogliono guardarsi e che dunque infrangono, fuggendo da quello scandalo. (trad. it. Gina Maneri)”
― Marcelo Figueras, Kamchatka

“Snakes shed their skin, cats their fur, manta rays their teeth. Man sheds used-up objects: he leaves an open Nesquik tin and a dirty glass on the kitchen counter, an open toothpaste tube, unmade beds, their sheets stained with urine; he leaves grandfather clocks, cigarette burns in the ashtrays, comics that have been scrawled on and books borrowed from the school library; he leaves clothes in the wardrobes and food in the fridge.”
― Marcelo Figueras, Kamchatka

“Auch wenn wir das Meer vor vierhundert Millionen Jahren (nach meinem Kalender) verlassen haben, das Meer hat uns nicht verlassen. Es ist immer noch in uns, in unserem Blut, in unserem Schweiß, in unseren Tränen.”
― Marcelo Figueras, Kamchatka