Simone Quotes

“-¡Hombre, es difícil ignorar a España!
-Pero, es muy fácil ignorar a otros- explicó Máximo- anulándolos de entrada, del nacimiento a la muerte, de generación en generación, justificándolo todo con la superstición de una historia común de valores incuestionables. En esa tradición común que mencionas y de la que supuestamente hago parte yo nunca me he visto ni nadie me ha visto.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“La única salida sería tener dinero para poder encerrarse o viajar, para recuperarse viendo y escuchando otras cosas. Éste es el único verdadero privilegio aquí. La riqueza permite imaginar que no se tiene nada que ver con esto.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“Una literatura- continuó Noreña- es más que una serie de libros. Una literatura por más restringida y menor que sea como la puertorriqueña o la de otros países de América Latina y del mundo, no puede limitarse a ser una sucesión sin fin de libros. Hay que enfrentarse a algo. Ahora lo hago contigo y con el mundo del que procedes. Mañana será con otro asunto.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“Las parejas se niegan a verlo, pero toda historia de amor tiene su final. Las uniones que duran la vida entera, son sobrevivientes, luchadores empecinados contra el desmoronamiento.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“La soledad y el sufrimiento acumulado por años, el peso de toda una vida, nos había llevado a este punto. Éramos náufragos que compartían la misma balsa en el océano de las calles de San Juan y estaba claro que sin esta indigencia jamás nos hubiéramos encontrado.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“I was her match, one half of an impossible couple, half of two bodies that had never met their mates in any other.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“Someday, I'd hear about her, when we no longer counted for each other.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“What happens when you wish to honor these streets not because they deserve any special tribute but because almost your whole past took place here, because here is what made us yearn to set it to paper?”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“Frailty in the culture of letters is always the manifestation of a despicable time, a brutal and naive era.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“We aren't subsidized by anybody, and we can't write for a press that is pure garbage, and our books hardly exist for anyone. We're a geographic, political, and literary island. But there isn't a huge difference between the situation of a writer from Spain or whatever and us, though they'll never be able to see it. And I'm telling you the truth: I prefer the clarity of being on the margins, in this squalor.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“We live our love unconsciously, as pleasure, and what we miss upon its end is living bereft of memories, the life this small-format, manageable eternity created.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“... others might found, build, and rule cities, but writers are the ones who invent them.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“As I sat down next to the window, I realized that I'd been there a few months before, also on a Saturday, when I didn't know who the author of the messages might be. Things were fundamentally changed now. The realization made me smile, but it came with an uncomfortable premonition suggesting that all conditions and relationships are unstable.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“The life of Li had been determined by events and commitments that bound her indefinitely. Immigration, poverty, family debts had meant a sort of servitude.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“A man and a woman are transformed when they look straight at each other and for the first time the silence doesn't weigh on them. After that they'd be fooling themselves if they pretended nothing was going to happen. A new story begins then, and there's no backing away.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“For someone like her, culture wasn't about privileges or entertainment. Instead, as she stole time from her sleep and work and put up with the incomprehension of those around her, she was using culture as a weapon for survival.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“The world of Li Chao: the the planet whose total population is made up of only me: one Chinese woman among more than a billion Chinese, one Chinese woman on an island where there are no Chinese except in restaurants, one Chinese woman who doodles and reads.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“My problem isn't the language but the impossibility everyone else has of imagining me. Is it possible to write when no one shares your identity, when the vast majority of people can't even imagine you?”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“After giving me the sparse outline of her life, she said I could now understand why she preferred books to men and why of all possible men, she had felt curious about a man who was a writer.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“Freedom is not a human right conferred by Heaven. Nor does the freedom to dream come at birth: it is a capacity and an awareness that needs to be defended. Moreover, even dreams can be assailed by nightmares.' Gao Xinjian, ONE MAN'S BIBLE”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“One of the most apt images of a love story is the streets of the city that gave birth to and in time may witness the death of that love.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“No sooner had I come up with this miserable explanation than I realized something inside me was rebelling against the possibility of starting a new relationship with Julia. The fact that everything might turn out fine on this day was no relief; it would only mean draining the bitter cup of disaster a second time.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“So many things have always seemed unbelievable to me, as if the world were endlessly foreign to me, as if this were the measure of the distance between me and the men I share it with.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“Writing fragments, writing notes in a notebook as the days fly by, is the closest I can come to creating a text that doesn't know it's lying. Later, when I rework it, I'll introduce subterfuges and establish ways of not saying things, or of not saying everything. But here, in this black notebook, I still don't know what I shouldn't let myself confess. It doesn't matter if what I say is true. I don't need to know. I don't know what will happen tomorrow. I don't know what I'll write after that. I've got all my writing ahead of me.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“The only way out is having enough money to go into seclusion or to travel, recover by seeing and hearing other things. That's the only real privilege here. If you're rich enough, you can pretend you don't have anything to do with this.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“But sometimes your depression stirs up no feelings, so it hardly deserves the name. It's just what's left when time's up and so many things have been lost or will never be gained, and you know there's nothing to hope for in the end but this: this Sunday morning.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“So many men and women have believed in the possibility of changing history, yet all they ever did was suffer it. Or maybe I should say: all they did was put up with their neighbors, their family, their wives, themselves. I've taken the blows and I'm still standing. That's about all I've accomplished.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“para darse cuenta de que la belleza existía y podía encontrarse en un gesto, una mirada, un salto o un libro. Aunque había tenido la fortuna de descubrirla, lo que ya era un don, nunca había logrado librarse de ese patio de escuela, esos maestros, esos compañeros de clase y juego.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“Estas incertidumbres y zonas de sombra, contrario a lo que se podía suponer, acrecentaban nuestra voluntad de estar juntos. Era como si supiéramos que el fin ya convivía con nosotros y había que luchar por retardarlo.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone

“Un hombre y una mujer se transforman cuando sostienen una mirada en la que por primera vez no pesa el silencio. A partir de ese momento, es un engaño suponer que nada va a pasar. Desde entonces se construye una historia de la que es imposible retirarse.”
― Eduardo Lalo, Simone