Zama Quotes

“I understood that she was more candor & despair than woman. She had refused to be flesh & triumphed. She was freer than I.”
― Antonio Di Benedetto, Zama

“Comenzaba la tarde, pero tanto mal me había dado aquel día que me espantaba continuarlo. Sin embargo, no se puede renunciar a vivir medio día: o el resto de la eternidad o nada.”
― Antonio Di Benedetto, Zama

“The sun was a dog with a hot, dry tongue that licked and licked me until it woke me up.”
― Antonio Di Benedetto, Zama

“Estoy entrgado a la nada. I am delivered up to nothingness.”
― Antonio Di Benedetto, Zama

“But a man cannot renounce his life for half a day: There is either the rest of eternity or nothing.”
― Antonio Di Benedetto, Zama

“But I had done for them what no one had ever tried to do for me. To say, to their hopes: No.”
― Antonio Di Benedetto, Zama

“The past was a small notebook, much scribbled-upon, that I had somehow mislaid.”
― Antonio di Benedetto, Zama

“The sun burned white, conjugating its colorlessness, it’s fixed, blazing surface, against sand so blank that it induced visions.”
― Antonio Di Benedetto, Zama

“A dead monkey, still whole, still undecomposed, drifted back and forth with a certain precision upon those ripples and eddies without exit. . . . There we were: Ready to go and not going.”
― Antonio Di Benedetto, Zama

“There remained the fear of dreams, which are incontrollable.”
― Antonio Di Benedetto, Zama

“In the end it had all been too simple, too easy. But I feared my good fortune.”
― Antonio Di Benedetto, Zama

“I asked myself not why I was alive but why I had lived. Out of expectation, I supposed, and wondered whether I still expected anything. It seemed I did.

Something more is always expected.”
― Antonio Di Benedetto, Zama

“Maybe everything depends . . . on where you’re born, and the inadequacy of the destiny that follows from that.”
― Antonio Di Benedetto, Zama

“Cuando la tribu se acostumbró a servirse con prescindencia de los ojos, fue más feliz. Cada cual podía estar solo consigo mismo. No existían la vergüenza, la censura y la inculpación; no fueron necesarios los castigos. Recurrían los unos a los otros para actos de necesidad colectiva, de interés común: cazar un venado, hacer techo a un rancho. El hombre buscaba a la mujer y la mujer buscaba al hombre para el amor. Para aislarse más, algunos se golpearon los oídos hasta romperse los huesecillos. Pero cuando los hijos tuvieron cierta edad, los ciegos comprendieron que los hijos podían ver. Entonces fueron penetrados por el desasosiego. No conseguían estar en sí mismo.s Abandonaron los ranchos y se echaron a los bosques, a las praderas, a las montañas...Algo los perseguía o los empujaba. Era la mirada de los niños, que iba con ellos y por eso no conseguían detenerse en ningún sitio. Apenas unos pocos, aún plegados a la vida nómada, no se sentían alcanzados todavía.”
― Antonio Di Benedetto, Zama

“... but she reckoned that in larger cities people were less alone, for they didn't all know each other so well.”
― Antonio di Benedetto, Zama

“Me pregunté, no por qué vivía, sino por qué había vivido. Supuse que por la espera y quise saber si aún esperaba algo. Me pareció que sí.
Siempre se espera más”
― Antonio di Benedetto, Zama

“Como un dios no puede crear dioses, pensó crear al hombre, para que este los creara.”
― Antonio di Benedetto, Zama

“I saw everything before me in good order, possible, realized or realizable. Nevertheless, it was as if I, I myself, might generate failure. Not that I judged myself guilty of this failure; it was as if the guilt were an inheritance and had little to do with me. I was equipped with a kind of advance resignation. Everything is possible, I saw, and in the end every possibility can be exhausted.”
― Antonio Di Benedetto, Zama

“Her ardor matched my own. For a time I was eighteen years old once more, in all the perfection of youth.”
― Antonio Di Benedetto, Zama

“Me encontré con la Luna, que era una mujer gorda y desnuda, sentada en el horizonte.”
― Antonio Di Benedetto, Zama