Thus Were Their Faces Quotes

“When you write, everything is possible, even the very opposite of what you are.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“Writing is a luxury or, with luck, a rainbow of colors. It is my lifesaver when the water of the river or the sea tries to drag me under. When you want to die you fall in love with yourself, you look for something touching that will save you.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“How short life would be if certain unpleasant moments didn't make it feel endless!”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“What matters is what we write: that is what we are, not some puppet made up by those who talk and enclose us in a prison so different from our dreams.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“On the surface, there is no distinction between our experiences—some are vivid, others opaque; some are pleasant, others cause agony upon recollection—but there is no way of knowing which are dreams and which are reality.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“You could put rocks or lead weights on my feet. Haven't you read in a newspaper or novel that they throw bodies into the sea? Don't you ever go to the movies? It's so poetic.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“I write in order to forget scorn, in order not to forget, in order not to hate, from hate, from love, from memory, and so as not to die.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“And are you still in love?"
"No. Have you always had a mustache?"
"Only when I go out. When I am at home I take it off."
"Take it off now."
"Why do you want to kill yourself?"
"Why do you wear a false mustache?”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“I admire her for nothing in particular and for everything. Because she inhabits herself as if she were inside a house. Because she is shameless. Because she doesn't have any pimples or marks on her face.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“I look at everything without seeing anything. That's my habit. People think I'm nearsighted. In a certain sense I am.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“I am aware of my limitations, but happiness, and the lack of obstacles, don't seem indispensable for me to live."
"Me neither. Sometimes you make a decision and fulfill it even though the cause that has made you decide to do it no longer exists."
"Then you operate on the basis of selfishness."
"No, not selfishness but rather out of impulse, a seeming fidelity to myself.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“The dead don't feel pain, miss."
"Is that what you think, sir? The dead are very sensitive. They feel everything. They think more clearly than we do. If you offer them meat or wine they won't appreciate it, but offer them music or perfume and you'll see. They are never absentminded. They see ultraviolet colors like doves do. They are refined and sensitive. Otherwise, how else could you explain that they are given so many flowers? That people spend so much on flowers, statuettes, masses, hearses? How should I know?”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“In my hands, which smell of soap, I hide my innocent whims. Why? I don't know. They are like the precious stones in the workings of a watch - those rubies are necessary!”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“Certain postures make us believe in happiness. Sometimes lying down makes me believe in love.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“The whole world is a monument to our fidelity, because what is ours will never be found elsewhere without all the visions I have listed, symbols of the love that enslaves us. And if you go in search of a world without memories in order to forget, there is nothing that will block our eyes or our ears. Our skin is wide awake and covered with eyes, although others think that we only have two eyes, and ears, although others think we only have two ears. Certain key places in our bodies connect us to those aspects of spirituality, of sex, that cannot be confessed, like the palm of the woman's hand, the inside of her elbow, or the vulnerable flesh of his ear and the curve of his foot.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“The trees were bleeding with a wonderful smell - their wounds open, striped with red and blue. The forest became a huge hospital of wounded trees, without arms and without legs.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“Sitting on the terrace, wrapped in the whiteness of her dress, she felt what all women dressed in white must feel on a beautiful day - she felt transparent and impersonal like the day itself, surrounded by crowds of flowers awaiting her.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“From that moment on, you would always see the tragedies of your life adorned with tiny details. You missed the delicate flower of the mimosa, your odd weakness, but you felt that this arcane spectacle, brought on by unforeseen circumstances, would accomplish its goal: the impossible violation of your solitude.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“I venture forward with fear, as happens when one is in love.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“When you die, the demons and the angels are equally eager, knowing that you are asleep, still in one world and partly in another, and will come in disguise to your bed, stroke your head, and ask you to choose the things you had preferred during your life. First, they will show you the simple things, as if opening a book of samples. If they show you the sun, the moon, or the stars, you will see them in a ball of painted crystal, and you will think the crystal ball is the world; if they show you the sea or the mountains, you will see them in a stone and will think the stone is the sea or the mountains; if they show you a horse, it will be a miniature figurine, but you will think the horse is a real horse. The angels and the demons will confuse your spirit with pictures of flowers, glazed fruit, and candies. Making you think you are still a child, they will seat you in a chair formed from their hands called the queen's chair, or the golden seat, and in this way they will carry you with their hands clasped through those hallways to the center of your life, where your favorite things are hidden. Be careful. If you choose more things from Hell than from Heaven, you may be sent to Heaven; on the other hand, if you choose more things from Heaven than from Hell, you risk going to Hell, because your love of celestial things could be a sign of greed.
The laws of Heaven and Hell are flexible. Whether you're sent to one place or the other depends on the slightest detail. I know people who because of a broken key or a wicker birdcage went to hell, and others who for a sheet of newspaper or a glass of milk went to heaven.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“Children's crimes are dangerous. Children use any means to reach their ends. They study dictionaries. Nothing gets by them.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“It's hard to hide at night. At night every sound can be heard and the moonlight is like the light of your conscience. And the plants. Do you think the plants can help you?”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“She understood the perversity of a world in which a woman couldn't have her dog embalmed without people thinking her crazy.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“I have no memories. The angels will bring back all my memories on the day of my death. The cherubim will bring back the forms of all the faces. They will bring back all the hairstyles and ribbons, the positions of arms, past shapes of hands. The seraphim will bring me taste, sound, and fragrances, the flowers I received as gifts, landscapes. The archangels will bring back conversations and farewells, light, the silence of reconciliation.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“A silence of cloisters and roses was in our hearts.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“there are voices that you can see, that keep on revealing the expression of a face even after its beauty is gone.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“When we are awake, we live in a shared world, but when we sleep, each of us is hurled into a world of our own.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“The women cried with the force of poetry”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“I thought about how cruel people can be when they are afraid. Why had I thrown the rock? To deserve being punished? To prove that I could kill too? To prove something to someone? To myself. Nobody had seen me.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

“I understand that our lives depend on a certain number of people who see us as living beings. If those people imagine that we are dead, we die.”
― Silvina Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces