Cantoras Quotes

“Why did life put so much inside a woman and then keep her confined to smallness?”
― Carolina De Robertis, Cantoras

“Maybe everyone bore the wounds, no matter what had or hadn't happened to them; maybe they were all part of the same vast, bruised body in the shape of a nation. A body groping for the slightest illusions of safety.”
― Carolina De Robertis, Cantoras

“It seemed, at times, that this was the only way the world would be remade as the heroes had dreamed: one woman lifts another woman, and she in turn lifts the world.”
― Carolina De Robertis, Cantoras

“She hadn’t known air could taste like this, so wide, so open. Her body a welcome. Skin awake. The world was more than she had known, even if only for this instant, even if only in this place. She let her lips part and the breeze glided into her mouth, fresh on her tongue, full of stars. How did so much brightness fit in the night sky? How could so much ocean fit inside her? Who was she in this place?”
― Carolina De Robertis, Cantoras

“Suffering has no measure. There are no scales to weigh it. There is only sorrow after sorrow.”
― Carolina De Robertis, Cantoras

“It was remarkable how hidden people found each other.”
― Carolina De Robertis, Cantoras

“Safe is never given. Safe is what you make with your own hands.”
― Carolina De Robertis, Cantoras

“It was strange, she thought, how you could live all your life in a home defined by people who loved you and took care of you and shared ancestors with you and yet did not entirely see you, people whom you protected by hiding yourself.”
― Carolina De Robertis, Cantoras

“She hovered in the space between fears.”
― Carolina De Robertis, Cantoras

“She'd seen her mother, her sisters, watched the way they wrapped their days around their men, the way it worked, a code she'd always known she'd avoid for her own life, who wanted it? what was the point? It wasn't worth having a man no matter how much people mocked you for lacking one.”
― Carolina De Robertis, Cantoras

“Only later, as their bodies merged, would she feel Malena's own hunger under the surface, waiting, quiet, like a creature unsuited to the hunt. It was enough and a relief to Romina. It seemed, at times, that this was the only way the world would be remade as the heroes had dreamed: one woman holds another woman, and she in turn lifts the world.”
― Carolina De Robertis, Cantoras

“Husbands. People crazy enough to think that washing their boxers and cooking their food and listening to their boring rants for the rest of your life would make you happy.”
― Carolina De Robertis, Cantoras

“Qué es el amor —dijo—, si no puede contener todos los cauces del espíritu?”
― Carolina De Robertis, Cantoras

“Qué mentira la de que el tiempo sana todas las heridas. Qué mentira tan despiadada. Hay tajos que nunca sanan bien y lo mejor que se puede hacer es cubrirlos de capas de ruido, de días, de amor como una falsa piel; desviar la atención a cualquier otro lugar.”
― Carolina De Robertis, Cantoras

“Y ahora estoy atrapada acá, forzada a realizar mi arte en esta jaula que llamamos país, donde ni siquiera se puede armar un espectáculo sin autorización de la policía, donde no se puede caminar de noche por las calles, donde hay que cuidarse de lo que se dice y todo el mundo todos los días tiene la pinta de recién salido de un funeral.”
― Carolina De Robertis, Cantoras

“Porque si eso te podía pasar cuando bajabas la cabeza como una buena ratita, entonces ella había descubierto el secreto de los militares: la obediencia no te protegía. Y en ese caso, ¿por qué molestarse en obedecer? ¿Por qué no resistir?”
― Carolina De Robertis, Cantoras

“nunca sospechó que pudieran sentirse algo más que amigas, algo más grande, un tipo de familia alternativa cosida por el hecho de haber sido desgarradas del tejido del mundo aceptable.”
― Carolina De Robertis, Cantoras

“You had to get to the far edges of reality to breathe that air; it wasn’t easy to find; but if you found it, breathing was still possible.”
― Carolina De Robertis, Cantoras

“Before the coup life in Uruguay had never clung to clock time. [...] Not so now. Martial law breeds martial time. You become precise to stay within the lines of safety - or rather what you pretend are lines of safety, since those parameters could stop working at any moment.”
― Carolina De Robertis, Cantoras