The Book of All Loves Quotes

“We are all souvenirs of an idea, of a perversion, of a nation, of a person, of whatever it might be; we do not possess souvenirs, they possess us.”
― Agustín Fernández Mallo, The Book of All Loves

“Sometimes, when it starts to grow light in the valley and you’re still asleep and the early morning sunlight through the window begins to shine on your body, it’s like my eyes have never seen you before, like you’ve come into being simultaneously with the morning. Then I don’t know what you’re dreaming about, and I start to panic at the possibility I won’t recognize you when you wake.
– she says.

Your face, like water and like uranium, like birds and houseplants, like the sun’s corona and like writing, already existed before you were born. Your face has been among humans always. That was why I recognized you the moment I saw you.
- he says.”
― Agustín Fernández Mallo, The Book of All Loves

“There is a movement towards the bone that is missing from my ribs, towards birds that have lost their way, towards a desert of lies with walls erected around them.
– he says.

In the Beginning there was also the darkness of a womb, and then a cry and tears at the contact with light. For this reason, tears and light are sisters.
– she says.”
― Agustín Fernández Mallo, The Book of All Loves

“To love someone is to admit that there is also something in them that frightens you.
– she says.

And yet, with you I don’t tremble.
– he says.”
― Agustín Fernández Mallo, The Book of All Loves

“In these months away, I’ve seen people love one another who no longer love themselves, I’ve seen the bolus of the sun wane in a dirty half-light, I’ve gone through days subject to the systematic time of earthly Botox, and heavenly vessels announcing their own coming but then instead the arrival of pagans converted to religions that venerate gold and animals, and I have also walked lonely streets when the people were all asleep, which was to cross a desert peopled with dreams. There were times when, inside 166one of these dreams of people I didn’t know, you would suddenly appear.
– he says.

In your absence, I have not stopped thinking about you. At no moment has the image of you left me. You are the totality of all that I know.
– she says.”
― Agustín Fernández Mallo, The Book of All Loves

“Your life and mine are infinite, they cover entire millennia. The rest of humanity does not understand this timescale.
– she says.

Our mission is to ascertain the epochs of terrestrial love.
– he says.”
― Agustín Fernández Mallo, The Book of All Loves

“The air in this valley is full of keys and locks, but there are no doors.
– she says.

We are the doors.
– he says.”
― Agustín Fernández Mallo, The Book of All Loves

“There’s a story that’s stuck inside my head, something I heard when I was small and which has been with me ever since: it’s about two people of different sexes who converse day and night, for months and years they talk non-stop, and they talk so much and share such a quantity of knowledge, facts and opinions, that they end up swapping sexes without knowing how.
– she says.

No wonder. I once heard somebody say that the particles which make up the world are all one and the same particle. It takes only a slight twist to turn protons into neutrons, and vice versa.
– he says.”
― Agustín Fernández Mallo, The Book of All Loves

“No archive exists that could ever store all that’s forgotten, not because it can never return or be remembered, but because so much is forgotten that the world it occupies is larger than our own by various orders of magnitude. Memory loss, though apparently taking something away from us, also constitutes us. Meaning that when we transmit information, we also transmit all of those forgotten worlds, although in a manner that we are still yet to completely comprehend. This forgetting is me introduced into the heads of others, is my life enclosed in that place, or the part of me accessible only to the person who – in the experience of love – has me inside their head, even though this person (I know) may have forgotten me forever.”
― Agustín Fernández Mallo, The Book of All Loves

“You and I are nothing.
– he says.

In a world whose only desire is to devour everything, it’s better to be nothing.
– she says.”
― Agustín Fernández Mallo, The Book of All Loves