Physical love is unthinkable without violence.

The assassination of Allende quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Bohemia, the bloody massacre in Bangladesh caused Allende to be forgotten, the din of war in the Sinai Desert drowned out...

Do you think that a doe in the jaws of a tiger feels less horror than you? People thought up the idea that animals don’t have the same capability for suffering as humans, because otherwise...

En realidad Jesús era un jovencito y es probable que no supier amucho de la vida. Es posible que todas sus enseñanzas puedan explicarse sólo a partir de su juventud y su inexperiencia. De su...

The more vast the amount of time we’ve left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it. This pronouncement seems to state the obvious and yet it is false....

Tereza’s mother never stopped reminding her that being a mother meant sacrificing everything. Her words had the ring of truth, backed as they were by the experience of a woman who had lost everything because...

nostalgia” en su forma griega y prefieren decir Sehnsucht: deseo de lo que está ausente; pero Sehnsucht puede aludir tanto a lo que fue como a lo que nunca ha sido (una nueva aventura), por...

Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding.

Aesthetic racism is almost always a sign of inexperience. Those who have not made their way far enough into the world of amorous delights judge women only by what can be seen. But those who...

Darling, my darling, don’t think that I don’t love you or that I didn’t love you, but it’s precisely because I love you that I couldn’t have become what I am today if you were...

He was no longer quite sure whether anything he had ever thought or felt was truly his own property, or whether his thoughts were merely a common part of the world’s store of ideas which...

Memory cannot be understood, either, without a mathematical approach. The fundamental given is the ratio between the amount of time in the lived life and the amount of time from that life that is stored...

Si un danseur a la possibilité d’entrer dans le jeu politique, il refusera ostensiblement toutes les négociations secrètes (qui sont depuis toujours le terrain de jeu de la vraie politique) en les dénonçant comme mensongères,...

For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?

The religion of orgasm: utilitarianism projected into sex life; efficiency versus indolence; coition reduced to an obstacle to be got past as quickly as possible in order to reach an ecstatic explosion, the only true...

L’avenir n’est qu’un vide indifférent qui n’intéresse personne, mais le passé est plein de vie et son visage irrite, révolte, blesse, au point que nous voulons le détruire et le repeindre.

I cannot hate them because nothing binds me to them; I have nothing in common with them.

Tomás no se daba cuenta en aquella ocasión de que las metáforas son peligrosas. Con las metáforas no se juega. El amor puede surgir de una sola metáfora.

No one can give anyone else the gift of the idyll; only an animal can do so, because only animals were not expelled from Paradise. The love between dog and man is idyllic. It knows...

Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn...

People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It’s not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us,...

[B]ut pain doesn’t listen to reason, it has it’s own reason, which is not reasonable.

Our dreams prove that to imagine – to dream about things that have not happened – is among mankind’s deepest needs.

Il avait encore la peau recouverte d’acné juvénile et, pour que ça ne se voie pas, il portait sur son visage le masque de la révolte.

metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love

The tree of possibilities: life as it reveals itself to a man arriving, astonished, at the threshold of his adult life: an abundant treetop canopy filled with bees singing. And he thinks he understands why...

When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The...

— ,Y por qué tuvo que elegir precisamente a Alzbeta? —gritó el médico jefe.—Precisamente porque no había ningún motivo. Si hubiera algún motivo, podríaencontrarse de antemano y mi actitud podría determinarse de antemano. Precisamente en...

I bambini sono senza passato ed è questo tutto il mistero dell’innocenza magica del loro sorriso…

Anyone whose goal is ‘something higher’ must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below...

Bėgant metams, ji ims įžvelgti visuose šiuose panašumuose žmonių suvienodėjimą (žmonės norėdami pasibučiuoti visi iki vieno sustoja toje pačioje vietoje, visi rengiasi vienodai, girdami moterį vartoja tas pačias metaforas) ir alinamą įvykių monotoniją (įvykių, kurie...

Celui qui éprouve de l’aversion pour les danseurs et veut les dénigrer se heurtera toujours à un obstacle infranchissable : leur honnêteté ; car en s’exposant constamment au public, le danseur se condamne à être...

The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have...

He looked at her and tried to discover behind her lascivious expression the familiar features that he loved tenderly. It was as if he were looking at two images through the same lens, at two...

A man is responsible for his ignorance.

…no one can do a thing about feelings, they exist and there’s no way to censor them. We can reproach ourselves for some action, for a remark, but not for a feeling, quite simply because...

Quien se entrega a otro como un soldado que se rinde, debe hacer previamente entrega de cualquier tipo de arma. Y si se queda sin defensa alguna ante un ataque, no podrá evitar preguntarse: ,Cuándo...

given the nature of the human couple, the love of a man and a woman is a priori inferior to that which can exist (at least in the best instances) in the love between man...

Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for...

It’s not your enemies who condemn you to solitude, it’s your friends

Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing...

vivre dans la vérité, ne mentir ni à soi-même ni aux autres, ce n’est possible qu’à la condition de vivre sans public. Dès lors qu’il y a un témoin à nos actes, nous nous adaptons...

Youth is a terrible thing: it is a stage trod by children in buskins and fancy costumes mouthing speeches they’ve memorized and fanatically believe but only half understand

It is a tragicomic fact that our proper upbringing has become an ally of the secret police. (…) The “Tell the truth!” imperative drummed into us so automatically that we feel ashamed of lying even...

o gün akşamüstü son bir defa daha kırlarda dolaşmaya çıktığında yaşadığı tuhaf bir anı hatırladı: bir dere kıyısına gelmiş, çimenlere uzanmıştı. uzun süre orada öylece uzanmış, akarsuyun ta içinden geçerek bütün acıları ve bütün pislikleri;...

Tereza knew what happens during the moment love is born: the woman cannot resist the voice calling forth her terrified soul; the man cannot resist the woman whose soul thus responds to his voice.

We will never cease our critique of those persons who distort the past, rewrite it, falsify it, who exaggerate the importance of one event and fail to mention some other; such a critique is proper...

The novel’s spirit is the spirit of complexity. . . . The novel’s spirit is the spirity of continuity . . . a thing made to last, to connect the past with the future.

The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad...

That conversation with the taxi driver suddenly made clear to me the essence of the writer’s occupation. We write books because our children aren’t interested in us. We address ourselves to an anonymous world because...