The longing for Paradise is man’s longing not to be man.

She blushed. It is a beautiful thing when a woman blushes; at that instant her body no longer belongs to her; she doesn’t control it; she is at its mercy; oh, can there be anything...

Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer...

le but que l’on poursuit est toujours voilé. Une jeune fille qui a envie de se marier a envie d’une chose qui lui est tout à fait inconnue. Le jeune homme qui court après la...

Do stories, apart from happening, being, have something to say? For all my skepticism, some trace of irrational superstition did survive in me, the strange conviction, for example, that everything in life that happens to...

pour occuper la scène il faut en repousser les autres. Ce qui suppose une technique de combat spéciale. le combat que mène le danseur, Pontevin l’appelle le judo moral ; le danseur jette le gant...

But isn’t it true that an author can write only about himself?

They shout that they want to shape a better future, but it’s not true. The future is only an indifferent void no one cares about,but the past is filled with life, and its countenance is...

They were ready to sell people a future in exchange for their past… They wanted to compel him to cast his life away and become a shadow, a man without past, an actor without a...

Il peut arriver des situations (dans les régimes dictatoriaux, par exemple) où prendre publiquement position est dangereux ; pour le danseur ce l’est pourtant un peu moins que pour les autres, car, s’étant promené sous...

Todos consideramos impensable que el amor de nuestra vida pueda ser algo leve, sin peso; creemos que nuestro amor es algo que tenía que ser; que sin él nuestra vida no sería nuestra vida. Nos...

Dreaming is not only an act of communication; it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself. Our dreams prove that to imagine – to...

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...