Big Fish

Una novela de Daniel Wallance. Bonita y diferente a la película. Pero no tan diferente y no tan bonita como la película.

"Over the past months she has dwindled in size and spirit, alive but distances from life. Her gaze falls just short of its goal. I look at her now and she looks lost, as if she doesn't know where she is, or who she is. Our life has changed so much since Father came home to die. The process of his dying has killed us all a little bit." (Pp. 14)

"If it seems like he's going to die she'll call for me. This is how we talk. In the land of the dying, sentences go unfinished, you know how they are going to end." (Pp. 14)

"It was something more than either of these things, but what, I couldn't say. It was as though he lived in a state of constant aspiration: getting there, wherever it was, wasn't the important thing: it was the battle, and the battle after that, and the war was never-ending." (Pp. 15)

"The magic of his absence yielded to the ordinariness of his presence." (Pp. 17)

"Well, laughter is the best medicine, he says though neither of us is laughing. Neither of us even smiles. He just looks at me with deepening sadness, the way it happens sometimes with him, going from one emotion to another the way some people channel surf." (Pp. 18)

"I'd say I'd missed you, I say, if I knew what I was missing." (Pp.  21)

"He ran through the darkness until it became light again, and the world turned green and wonderful." (Pp. 48)

"There's both sadness and relief in the way the tension leaves our bodies, and we look at each other, sharing that look, that once-in-a-lifetime look." (Pp. 65)

"Though Dr. Benett had given him a year to live about a year ago, he has been dying so long than in a way I just expect him to keep on dying forever." (Pp. 66)

"Dying, he has that look dying people get in their eyes sometimes, happy and sad, tired and spiritually blessed, all at the same time." (Pp. 67)

"And so we're stuck here, smiles on our faces like a couple of idiots. What is it you say now, what peace is there to be made in the last minutes of the last day that will mark the before and after of your life until then, the day that will change everything for both of you, the living and the dead?" (Pp. 69)

"I stop myself. There's an unspoken rule in my family that it's best not to talk religion or politics with my father. When the subject is religion he won't talk at all, and when it's politics he won't stop talking. The truth is, most things are hard to talk about with him. By that I mean the essence of things, the important things, the things that matter." (Pp. 70)

"The central air hums on, billowing the shades open at the bottom. Light streams in past the blinds, dust motes swimming. The room has a faint stench to it, which I thought I'd gotten used to, but haven't. It always makes me sick to my stomach and I feel it coming on strong now. It's either that or the shock to my system of having learned more about my father in the last few seconds than I have in the lifetime that preceded them." (Pp. 74)

"-Thanks, he says, and his eyelids flutter a bit, as if he's heard what he's come to hear. This is what is meant by last words: they are keys to unlock the afterlife. They're not last words but passwords, and as soon as they're spoken you can go." (Pp. 74)

"A kind of fraternity of wishful thinking and broken hearts." (Pp. 77)

"The sun beat down on my father and my father's yard with an intensity recalling an earlier time when the sun was hotter, the way everything in the world used to be hotter or bigger or better or simpler than things were right about now." (Pp. 117)

"He'd expected more, of course, from my arrival. A muted brilliance, a glow, maybe even a halo of some kind. That mystical feeling of completion. But none of that came. I was just a baby, like any other- except, of course, that I belonged to him, and that made me special." (Pp. 120)

"Regardless of how much he loved his wife, his son, he could only stand so much love. Being alone was lonely, but there was an even grater loneliness sometimes when he was surrounded by a lot of other people who were constantly making demands of him." (Pp. 123)

"He told me this again and again. as if he knew something might happen, that he might be forced to save my life one day." (Pp. 125)

"Suddenly I felt my father near me; it was as though we were flying, too, and that we were both falling together. His arms embraced me like a cloak, and I came to rest on the ground beside him. He had plucked me from Heaven and set me down safely on Earth." (Pp. 127)

"He stared at me for a long moment, and he winked, the wink meaning any goddamn thing I wanted it to mean." (Pp. 128)

"But he liked to leave me laughing. This is how he wanted to remember me, and how he wanted to be remembered." (Pp.130)

"Lots of stories, big and small. They all add up. Over a lifetime it all adds up. That's why we're here, William. We're a part of him, of who he is, just as he is a part of us. You still don't understand, do you?" (Pp. 139)

"How can the world be seen at such speeds? Where do people need to go so badly they can't realize what is already here, outside the car window? My father remembers when there were no cars at all. He remembers when people used to walk. And he does, too- walk, that is- but he still loves the feeling of an engine rumbling, wheels rolling, the display of life framed in the window in front and back and on all sides. The car is my father's magic carpet." (Pp. 144)

"How to get there, how the road seems to end where it doesn't, and how the lake seems to be where it isn't, and how hard it would be for anybody to think to find this strange place." (Pp. 151)

"In three inches of swamp water is more stagnant life than an ocean could hold; at its edge, where the muck hardens and warms, life itself begins." (Pp. 151)

"So many years began to pass in just this fashion, and his presence there becomes so ordinary and predictable that eventually it isn't as though he has never left, but as though he had never come in the first place." (Pp. 158)

" Because today was the day they would know and she hadn't wanted to think about it, hadn't wanted to sit there thinking of nothing else but what she might learn today." (Pp. 165)

"This wasn't life, of course. This was life support. This was what the medical world had fashined to take the place of Purgatory. I could see how many breaths he was taking by looking at the monitor. I could see what his frenetic heart was up to. And there were a couple of wavy lines and numbers I wasn't sure about at all, but I kept an eye on them as well. In fact, after a while it was the machines I was looking at, not my father at all. They had become him. They were telling me his story." (Pp. 171)

"There's no time for hellos and how are yours and we both know it." (Pp. 173)

"And he says it in this real shaky voice so I know, don't ask me how but I know that, machines or not, this will be the last time I ever see him alive. Tomorrow, he'll be dead." (Pp. 173)

"I look into his gray-blue dying eyes. We're staring at each other, showing each other our last looks, the faces we'll take with us into eternity, and I'm thinking how I wish I knew him better, how I wish we'd had a life together, wishing my father wasn't such a complete and utter goddamn mystery to me." (Pp. 174)

"All of a sudden my arms were full of the most fantastic life, frenetic, immposible to hold on to even if I'd wanted to, and I wanted to." (Pp. 180)

Everything is Illuminated

Ahora posteo las citas de un libro que leí recientemente. Everything is Illuminated de Johnathan Safran Foer. La verdad es que hacía ya tiempo que un libro no me llegaba tanto al alma. Me pareció hermoso, triste y real. El lenguaje que el autor utiliza es, creo yo, impecable. Al grado que practicamente después de leer la primera página ya no lo pude soltar en todo el día. No es un libro fácil, pues interpone dos historias a la vez: la del recorrido que Alex y Johnathan Safran Foer ("El héroe") hacen alrededor de Ukrania para encontrar un pequeño pueblo llamado Trachimbrod, en donde el abuelo de Johnathan vivió gran parte de su vida, así como la historia de la vida de Alex. Por otro lado se tiene también la historia de los antepasados de Johnathan y de los pueblos judíos fundados en eras de antaño. En fin, una historia hermosa, de principio a fin, desde la primera palabra hasta el punto final. Creo que es uno de esos libros a los que siempre recurriré.
Datos curiosos: Esta joya literaria ha sido filmada ya, y aunque la película se aleja un poco de una de las historias del libro, no deja de ser buena. Así que la recomiendo altamente.
El autor del libro lleva el mismo nombre que el personaje principal de su primera novela, ya que ambos (aunque, según él, no sean la misma persona) realizaron el viaje narrado en la historia. En fin, me callo, lean, disfruten, iLLumÍneNsE

“Amid Grandfather and I there was a silence you could cut with a scimitar.” (Pp. 7)

“[…] swept out to sea, with the secrets of his life kept forever inside him, like a love note in a bottle, to be found one morning by an unsuspecting couple on a romantic beach stroll.” (Pp. 15)

“[…] whispered sweet nothings into what was left of his ear, laughed with him over black coffee, cried with him over yellowing pictures, talked greenly about having kids of her own, began to miss him before she became sick, left her everything in her will, thought of him only as she died, always knew he was a fiction but believed in him anyway.” (Pp. 15)

“I examine her once when it is morning, and once before I manufacture Z’s, and on every instance I see something new, some manner in which her hairs produce shadows, or her lips summarize angles.” (Pp. 24)

“One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be a family.” (Pp. 24)

“I tried my best, and did the best I could, which was the best that I could do.” (Pp. 26)

“’Twenty six hours, fucking unbelievable’. This girl Unbelievable must be majestic, I thought.” (Pp. 27)

"They do not desire anything more than everything they have known." (Pp.28)
“It was not the feeling of completeness that I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.” (Pp. 37)

“We burned with love for ourselves, all of us, starters of the fire we suffered– our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure” (Pp. 41)

“This is a kiss. It is what happens when lips are puckered and pressed against something, sometimes other lips, sometimes a cheek, sometimes something else. It depends… this is my heart. You are touching it with your left hand, not because you are left-handed, although you might be, but because I am holding it against my heart. What you are feeling is the beating of my heart. It is what keeps me alive.” (Pp. 43)

“When he pulled her out to feed or just to hold her, her body was tattooed with the newsprint […] Sometimes he would rock her to sleep in his arms, and read her left to right, and know everything he needed to know about the world. If it wasn’t written on her, it wasn’t important to him.”(Pp. 44)

“It was so strange to him that such a different kind of note– I had to do it for myself – could look exactly the same: trivial, mundane, nothing. He could have hated her for leaving it there in plain sight, and he could have hated her for plainness of it, a message without adornment, without any small clue to indicate that yes, this is important, yes, this is the most painful note I’ve ever written, yes, I would sooner die than have to write this again. Where were the dried teardrops? Where was the tremor in the script?” (Pp. 44)

“He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others – the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by mid-afternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.” (Pp. 47)

“[…] humorous is the only truthful way to tell a sad story.” (Pp. 53)

“She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous stands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.” (Pp. 78)

"Brod discovered 613 sadness, each perfectly unique, each a singular emotion, no more similar than any other sadness than to anger, ecstasy, guilt or frustration. Mirror Sadness. Sadness of Domesticated Birds. Sadness of Being Sad in Front of One's Parents. Humor Sadness. Sadness of Love Without Release." (Pp. 79)

“Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.” (Pp. 79)

"Nothing felt like anything more than what it actually was." (Pp. 80)

"Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything else that does." (Pp. 82)

"They reciprocated the great and saving lie- that our love for things is greater than our love for our love for things- willfully playing the parts they wrote for themselves, willfully creating and believing fictions necessary for life." (Pp. 83)

"Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do?" (Pp. 84)

"It's not her company I need, but to know that she won't need mine, or that she won't not need it." (Pp. 84)

"Sentences became words became sighs became groans became grunts became light." (Pp. 97)

"...and says, with many different kinds of tears in her eyes, crying, each tear unique." (Pp. 99)

"We will have a large-screen television to watch basketball, a jacuzzi, and a hi-fi to write home about, although we will already be home." (Pp. 101)

"Everything I could remember about you I informed him, because I want him to know you, and because it makes it feel that you are yet near, that you did not go away." (Pp. 102)

"Why do we do that? Why are the painful things always electromagnets?" (Pp. 103)

“For how long could we fail until we surrendered? I felt as if all of the weight was residing on me. As with Father, there are only so many times you can utter It does not hurt before it begins to hurt even more than the hurt. You become enlightened of feeling of feeling hurt, which is worse, I am certain, than the existent hurt” (Pp. 117)

“This is love, she thought, isn’t it? When you notice someone’s absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence.” (Pp. 121)

"When she woke up crying from one of her nightmares, the Kolker would stay with her, brush her hair with his hands, collect her tears in thimbles for her to drink the next morning (the only way to overcome sadness is to consume it, he said)" (Pp. 122)

“...bruises were not marks of violence, but violent love. The Kolker was trapped in his body- like a love note in an unbreakable bottle, whose script never fades or smudges, and is never read by the eyes of the intended lover- forced to hurt the one with whom he wanted most to be gentle.” (Pp. 130)

"So many little things to do. Hundreds of millions of them. Everything in the universe felt like something to do." (Pp. 133)

"They had never seen one another from afar. They had never known the deepest intimacy, that closeness attainable only with distance... in the silence they attained other intimacy, that of words without talking." (Pp. 134)

"They lived with the hole. The absence that defined it became a presence that defined them. Life was a small negative space cut out of the eternal solidity, and for the first time, it felt precious- not like all of the words that had come to mean nothing, but like the last breath of a drowning person. (Pp. 135)

"So they strung their minutes like pearls on an hour-string."  (Pp. 137)

"Your heart is close to me

I'm nearer than near." (Pp. 137)

"He was a changing God, destroyed and recreated by his believers, destroyed and recreated by their belief... And when the bridegrooms knelt, it was not the god they believed in, it was the kneel: not the god's bronzed knees, but their own bruised ones." (Pp. 140)

"Don't let me hate who I become." (Pp. 141)

"Even Alf is not humorous at times." (Pp. 142)

"It is as if after surviving so much, there was no longer a reason to survive." (Pp. 143)

"He is not a bad person, he is a good person alive in a bad time. It makes him melancholy to remember his life." (Pp. 145)

"Everything is the way it is because everything was the way it was." (Pp. 145)

"We watched her, as if the whole world and its future were because of her" (Pp. 148)

"Each day was like another photograph. Her life was a book of photographs." (Pp. 148)

"I observed that the hero had small rivers descending his face, and I wanted to put my hand on his face, to be architecture for him." (Pp. 154)

"I understood that the silence was necessary for him to talk." (Pp. 157)

"The silence was a mountain." (Pp. 159)

“I do not think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.” (Pp. 180)

“You can not know how it felt to have to hear these things and then repeat them, because when 

I repeated them, I felt like I was making them new again.”

“…she was not crying which surprised me very much, but I understand now that she had found places for her melancholy that were behind more masks than only her eyes.” (Pp. 185)

"It was now happening too rapidly for me to understand. I wanted to understand it completely, but it would have required a year for each word." (Pp. 188)

"It is said that the Messiah will come at the end of the world.

-But it was not the end of the world, Grandfather said.

-It was. He just did not come.

-Why did he not come?

-This was the lesson we learned from everything that happened- there is no God. It took all of the hidden faces for Him to prove this to us.

-What if it was a challenge of your faith? I said

-I could not believe in a God that would challenge faith like this.

-What if it was not in His power?

-I could not believe in a God that could not stop what happened.

-What if it was a man and not God that did all of this?

-I do not believe in men, either." (Pp. 189)

"She cried when we came, and she cried when we departed, but she never cried while we were there." (Pp. 193)

“Words never mean what we want them to mean… non-sense words are the best thing we’ve got.” (Pp. 203)

"I saw you on our float, and oh, you were so uncommon. You were, in the face of such fakery, so natural." (Pp. 203)

"SADNESS OF THE INTELLECT: Sadness of being misunderstood; Humor Sadness; Sadness of Love wit(hou)t Release; Sadn(ss of be)in smart; Sadness of not knowing enough words to (express what you mean); Sadness of having options; Sadness of wanting sadness; Sadness of confusion; Sadness of domes(tic)ated Birds; Sadness of fini(shi)ng a book; Sadness of remembering; Sadness of forgetting; Anxiety sadness..." (Pp. 212)

“Our dreams cannot exist at the same time. I am so young, and he is so aged, and both of these facts should make us people who are deserving of their dreams, but this is not a possibility” (Pp. 218)

"I exist in case you need to be protected." (Pp. 227)

"Laughing afternoons into evenings, making love- which might or might not have been love-" (Pp. 229)

"He nodded and tried to convince himself to be convinced, tried to believe her, because he knew that the origin of a story is always an absence, and he wanted her to live amongst presences" (Pp. 230)

“They lay in silence, thinking their own thoughts, each trying to know the other’s. They were becoming strangers on top of each other.” (Pp. 232)

“They exchanged notes, like children. My Grandfather made his out of newspaper clippings and dropped them in her wooden baskets, into which he knew only her would dare stick a hand. Meet me under the wooden bridge, and I will show you things that you have never, ever seen. The M was taken from the army that would take his mother’s life; GERMAN FRONT ADVANCES ON SOVIET BORDER; The eet from they approaching warships: NAZI FLEET DEFEATS FRENCH AT LESACS; The me form the peninsula they were blue-eyeing: GERMANS SURROUND CRIMEA; The und for too little, too late: AMERICAN WAR FUNDS REACH ENGLAND; The er from the dog of dogs: HITLER RENDERS NONAGRESSION PACT INOPERATIVE… and so on, and so on, each note a collage of love that could never be, and war that could.” (Pp. 233)

"Could imagine no loneliness worse than an existence without her. She was the only one who could rightly claim to know him, the only one he missed when she was not there, and missed even before she was absent. She was the only one who wanted more of him than his arm." (Pp. 234)

"The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them." (Pp. 234)

"They have come to haunt the same places, to walk the same paths, to fall asleep in the shade of the same trees- but they would never acknowledge each other's existence." (Pp. 236)

"He could never completely love her, not with all of himself. He could never be completely owned, and he could never own completely." (Pp. 237)

“I’m all alone, he said
You’re not alone, she said taking his head to her chest
I am
You’re not alone, she said. You only feel alone.
To feel alone is to be alone. That’s what it is.” (Pp. 237)

“We have such chances to do good, and yet again and again you insist on evil” (Pp. 240)

"We all choose things, and we also all choose against things. I want to be the kind of person who chooses for more than chooses against, but like Safran, and like you, I discover myself choosing this time and the next time against what I am certain is good and correct, and against what I'm certain is worthy." (Pp. 241)

“What good is all of that love doing on paper? I said, Let love write on you for a little” (Pp. 243)

"You had to choose, and hope to choose the smaller evil." (Pp. 246)

"Of course I have ghosts, 

-What are your ghosts like?

-They are on the insides of the lids of my eyes.

-These are my ghosts, the spaces amid love." (Pp. 246)

"We stood next to each other because that is what friends do in the presence of evil or love." (Pp. 248)

"I loved him so much that Imadeloveimposible." (Pp. 251)

"Every aspect of his life was insufficient and undeserving of life. He was about to become someone who has lost half of everything he lived for." (Pp. 256)

"Each second was two hundred yards, to be walked, crawled. You couldn't see the next hour, it was so far in the distance. Tomorrow was over the horizon, and would take an entire day to reach." (Pp. 260)

“The only thing more painful than being an active forgetter is to be an inert rememberer.” (Pp. 260)

"Why did he do what he did? Why was he who he was?" (Pp. 260)

“The images of his infinite pasts and infinite futures washed over him, as he waited, paralyzed, in the present.” (Pp. 264)

"Her grief is replaced with a useful sadness.  The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your great-great-great-grandchildren's will be. But we learn to live in that love." (Pp. 266) 

Ferdydurke

Libro de Witold Gombrowicz, autor nacido en Polonia en 1904 y más tarde exiliado en Buenos Aires. Un libro que apunta a la (in)madurez y las (terriblemente) hermosas verdades de ésta. Así que lean, lean, mis pequeños Pimpkos.

"No tuve únicamente el propósito de llenar un tanto el espacio libre del papel, disminuir en algo la enormidad de las hojas vacías, que me asustan." (Pp. 92)

"Mas preguntemos todavía si aquella obra vuestra, única, excepcional y tan trabajada, no constituye sólo una partícula de treinta mil otras obras, también únicas y excepcionales, que aparecen en el transcurso del año." (Pp. 94)

"Ya desde hace tiempo hemos aprendido a eludir con una broma lo que nos embroma en forma demasiado mordaz e hiriente." (Pp. 94)

"Las pequeñas realidades os matan." (Pp. 95)

"Debemos adaptar nuestros sentimientos a nuestras manifestaciones." (Pp. 102)

"La realidad es más rica y grande que las genuinas ilusiones y las pobres mentiras" (Pp. 103)

"¿Conocéis ese malestar de cuando algo ya terminó y nada nuevo ha empezado todavía?" (Pp. 133)

"Sólo al primer acorde podemos elegir libremente; lo que sigue, constituye pura consecuencia." (Pp. 139)

"No os imaginéis que sea fácil quedarse así y fingir libertad de movimiento cuando todavía se está paralizado, ser agresivo cuando uno se siente mortalmente pasivo." (Pp. 147)

"No tenía pretextos- aun, si los tuviese, no podría usarlos- porque el asunto era demasiado interior para los pretextos." (Pp. 148)

"Mientras tanto caían las tinieblas y la soledad, esa soledad mentida de uno que, estando solo, no está, sin embargo, solo, sino en una espiritual y dolorosa vinculación con otra persona detrás de la pared."

"Los proceso que vivido junto a alguien y a la luz del día no son temibles, se vuelven inaguantables sin un compañero." (Pp. 149)

"Prefirió pasar sobre mi a andar conmigo." (Pp. 152)

"Y así el tiempo pasaba en mutuos suspiros." (Pp. 159)

"Se cristalizan mundos enteros entre los muslos de dos personas." (Pp. 161)

"Y se quedaba sentada después de cenar, oh, inmadura en su madurez, segura de sí misma, impasible y sola para sí misma, mientras que yo estaba sentado para ella y no podía ni por un solo segundo no estar sentado para ella." (Pp. 162)

"¿Temían? ¡Asustar! ¿Huían? ¡Perseguir! No cambies al mendigo por el vencedor, es el mendigo quien te trajo a la victoria." (Pp. 171)

"La belleza vista en la soledad resulta aún más aplastante." (Pp. 175)

"Nada nos conmueve tanto como ver a la amada cruelmente dura no solo frente a nosotros, sino hasta en nuestra ausencia, practicando su brutalidad e intransigencia como ejercitándose para cualquier eventualidad." (Pp. 176)

"Danzaba y mi danza sin pareja en la soledad y el silencio se hinchaba de locura hasta causarme pavor." (Pp. 181)

"¿Dónde no se encontraba su encanto? ¿En que cabeza no estaban sus muslos?" (Pp. 189)

"El general nopoderamiento cotidiano." (Pp. 199)

"Ni una sola vez entró en la órbita de mi mirada." (Pp. 200)

"Me pareció ver a la moderna en la oscuridad, crispando sus manos y mordiéndose el brazo hasta el dolor. Como si quisiera penetrar con los dientes en la belleza que tenía encerrada en ella misma." (Pp. 204)

"Nadie quería comprender y por eso nadie comprendía." (Pp. 212)

"Alejarse andando, ir alejándose y no sentir ni un recuerdo. Cuando murió todo en ti y nadie pudo todavía alumbrarte de nuevo. Oh, vale la pena vivir para la muerte, sólo para saber que todo murió en ti, que ya no hay nada." (Pp. 219)

"El pesar de ser creado, en nuestro yo, por otros hombres." (Pp. 222)

"El sufrimiento simétrico de la analogía y el analógico sufrimiento de la simetría." (Pp. 223)

"La indecible tristeza de lo indecible." (Pp. 224)

"Recuerda lo que yo no recuerdo, me conoce tal como yo nunca me había conocido." (Pp. 245)

La (In)soportable Levedad del Ser...

Rescatando las citas que me parecen más memorables de todos los libros que he leído, abró este espacio que no pretendo que nadie mas encuentre en la gigantesca red internetesca.

He aquí las frases que me han parecido más hermosas del maravilloso libro de Milán Kundera (releído- pues aparentemente sólo la relectura me hace cazar citas):

Primera Parte: La Levedad y el Peso

¨Las metáforas son peligrosas. Con las metáforas no se juega. El amor puede surgir de una sóla metáfora.¨ (Pp.19)

¨...lleno de una melancolía que se hacia cada vez más hermosa. Había pasado siete años de su vida con Teresa y ahora comprobaba que aquellos años eran más hermosos en el recuerdo que cuando los había vivido.¨(Pp. 37)

¨Ni siquiera el propio dolor es tan pesado como el dolor sentido con alguien, por alguien, para alguien, multiplicado por la imaginación, prolongado en mil ecos.¨(Pp. 39)

¨Hizo falta que se produjeran seis casualidades para empujar a Tomás hacia Teresa, como si él mismo no tuviera ganas... se basaba en un amor tan casual que no hubiera existido si su jefe no hubiera tenido la ciática hacía siete años. Y aquella mujer, aquella personificación de la casualidad absoluta yace ahora a su lado y respira profundamente mientras duerme.¨(Pp. 43)

Segunda Parte: El Alma y el Cuerpo

¨¿Pero un acontecimiento no es tanto más significativo y privilegiado cuantas más casualidades sean necesarias para producirlo?

Solo la casualidad puede aparecer ante nosotros como un mensaje. Lo que ocurre necesariamente, lo esperado, lo que se repite todo los días, es mudo. Sólo la casualidad nos habla.¨ (Pp. 56)

¨No es la necesidad, sino la casualidad, la que está llena de encantos. Si el amor debe ser inolvidable, las casualidades deben volar hacia él desde el primer momento.¨(Pp. 57)

¨Es precisamente el débil quien tiene que ser fuerte y saber marcharse cuando el fuerte es demasiado débil para ser capaz de hacerle daño al débil.¨(Pp. 82)

¨Uno se percata de su debilidad y no quiere luchar contra ella, sino entregarse.¨(Pp. 83)

Tercera Parte: Palabras (in)comprendidas

¨...el amor significaba la permanente espera de un ataque.¨(Pp. 89)

¨...el resumen sentimental de una historia no sentimental.¨(Pp. 94)

¨Un mismo objeto evocaba cada vez un significado distinto, pero, junto con ese significado, resonaban (como un eco, una comitiva de ecos) todos los significados anteriores.¨(Pp. 94)

¨La primera traición es irreparable. Produce una reacción en cadena de nuevas traiciones, cada una de las cuales nos distancia más y más del lugar de la traición original.¨(Pp. 98)

¨...piensa en el tiempo en que vivía Johann Sebastian Bach, cuando la música era como una rosa que crecía en una enorme planicie nevada de silencio.¨(Pp. 99)

¨...se acostumbró melancólicamente a la idea de que ya no le quedaba más que aquel mar de letras que no tienen ningún peso y no son la vida.¨(Pp. 109)

¨...sabía que la belleza es un mundo traicionado. Sólo podemos encontrarla cuando sus perseguidores la han dejado olvidada por error en algún sitio.¨(Pp. 117)

¨-¿Y por qué no utlizas nunca tu fuerza contra mí?

-Porque amar significa renunciar a la fuerza- dijo Franz con suavidad¨(Pp. 118)

¨-El amor es un combate- sonreía Marie Claude- Combatiré todo lo que sea necesario. Hasta el final.

-¿Qué el amor es un combate? No tengo el menor deseo de combatir- dijo Franz y se marchó.¨(Pp. 128)

¨Es posible que, si hubieran permanecido más tiempo juntos, hubieran empezado lentamente a comprender las palabras que decían. Sus vocabularios se habrían ido aproximando tímida y lentamente como unos amantes muy vergonzosos, y la música de cada uno de ellos hubiera empezado a fundirse con la música del otro. Pero ya es tarde. Sí, es tarde...¨(Pp. 131-132)

Cuarta Parte: El Alma y El Cuerpo

¨Teresa sabe que así es el momento en que nace el amor: la mujer no puede resistirse a la voz que llama a su alma asustada; el hombre no puede resistirse a la mujer cuya alma es sensible a su voz.¨(Pp. 165)

¨El amor que hay entre ellos es de una arquitectura extrañamente asimétrica.¨(Pp. 165)

¨La gente, en su mayoría, huye de sus penas hacia el futuro. Se imaginan, en el correr del tiempo, una línea más allá de la cual sus penas actuales dejarán de existir. Pero Teresa no ve ante sí rayas como ésas. Lo único que puede consolarla es mirar hacia atrás.¨(Pp. 169)

¨Todas las cosas y las personas aparecen disfrazadas.¨(Pp. 171)

¨...la frágil construcción de su amor se derrumbaría por completo. Porque esa construcción tiene por única columna su fidelidad y los amores son como los imperios: cuando desaparece la línea sobre la cual han sido construidos, perecen ellos también.¨(Pp. 174)

¨no sabía cómo salvar aquel silencio entre ambos.¨(Pp. 174)

Quinta Parte: La Levedad y el Peso

¨¿Un idiota que ocupa el trono está libre de culpa sólo por ser idiota?¨(Pp. 181)

¨¿No es el acto amoroso la eterna repetición de lo mismo?¨(Pp. 203)

¨...la persecusión de lo inimaginable no termina con el descubrimiento de la desnudez, sino que continuá más allá...¿en qué tonos sonarán sus suspiros?¨(Pp. 203)

¨El ´yo´ individual es aquello que se diferencia de lo general, o sea lo que no puede ser adivinado y calculado de antemano, lo que en el otro es necesario develar, descubrir, conquistar.¨(Pp. 203)

¨El periódo dedicado a la conquista era la medida del valor de lo conquistado.¨(Pp. 205)

¨...había recortado con su escalpelo imaginario parte del infinito tejido de universo.¨(Pp. 211)

¨La chica hablaba de la tormenta, sonreía al recordarla y él la miraba asombrado y casi sentía vergüenza: ella había vivivdo algo hermoso y él no lo había vivido con ella. El doble modo en que la memoria de los dos había reaccionado ante la tormenta nocturna contenía toda la diferencia que hay entre el amor y el no-amor.¨(Pp. 212-213)

¨Parece como si existiera en el cerebro una región totalmente específica, que podría denominarse memoria poética y que registrara aquello que nos ha conmovido, encantado, que ha hecho hermosa nuestra vida...el amor empieza en el momento en que una mujer inscribe su primera palabra en nuestra memoria poètica.¨(Pp. 213)

¨No tenía la seguridad de estar actuando correctamente, pero tenía la seguridad de estar actuando tal como quería actuar.¨(Pp. 225)

¨Esa es la imagen de la que nació. Los personajes no nacen como los seres humanos del cuerpo de su madre, sino de una situación, una frase, una metáfora en la que está depositada, como dentro de una nuez, una posibilidad humana fundamental que el autor cree que nadie ha descubierto aún o sobre la que nadie ha dicho nada aún nada escencial. ¿Acaso no es cierto que el autor no puede hablar más que de sí mismo?... los personajes de mi novela son mis propias posibilidades que no se realizaron.¨(Pp. 226-7)

¨A pesar de que los dos deseaban estar juntos, tenían que ir acercándose desde una gran distancia.¨(Pp. 232)

¨...le pareció que era incapaz de soportar su amor. La tierra puede estremecerse por las explosiones de la bombas, la patria puede ser expoliada cada día por un invasor distinto, todos los habitantes de la calle contigua pueden ser conducidos ante el pelotón de ejecución, todo eso lo soportaría con mucha mayor facilidad de lo que estaría dispuesto a reconocer. Pero era incapaz de soportar la tristeza de un solo sueño de Teresa... Sí, eso es la muerte: Teresa duerme, tiene pesadillas, pero él no puede despertarla.¨(Pp. 234)

¨Amarrar el amor al sexo ha sido una de las ocurrencias más extravagantes del Creador.¨(Pp. 243)

Sexta Parte: La Gran Marcha

¨La mierda es un problema teológico más complejo que el mal. Dios les dio a los hombres la libertad y por eso podemos suponer que al fin y al cabo no es responsable de los crímenes humanos. Pero el único responsable de la mierda es aquel que creó al hombre.¨(Pp. 252)

¨Allí donde habla el corazón es de mala educación que la razón lo contradiga.¨(Pp. 256)

¨...levantando el puño y amenazando a aquel silencio de la orilla de enfrente.¨(Pp. 274)

¨La realidad es más que un sueño, mucho más que un sueño...¨(Pp. 279)

Séptima Parte: La sonrisa de Karenin

¨No tiene ningún mérito portarse bien con otra persona... Nunca seremos capaces de establecer con seguridad en qué medida nuestras relaciones con los demás son producto de nuestros sentimientos, de nuestro amor, de nuestro desamor, bondad o maldad, y hasta qué punto son el resultado de la relación de fuerzas exisentes entre ellos y nosotros.¨ (Pp. 295)

¨Volvieron a mirarlo y a pensar que Karenin reía y que mientras riera seguiría teniendo un motivo para vivir, aunque estuviera condenado a muerte.¨(Pp. 298)

¨No estaban felices a pesar de la tristeza, sino gracias a la tristeza. Iban cogidos de la mano y los dos tenían la misma imagen ante los ojos: un perro cojo que representaba diez años de su vida.¨(Pp. 299)

¨La nostalgía del Paraíso es el deseo del hombre de no ser hombre.¨(Pp. 302)

¨...¿me ama?, ¿ha amado a alguien más que a mí?, ¿me ama más de lo que yo lo amo a él? Es posible que todas estas preguntas que inquieren acerca del amor, que lo miden, lo analizan, lo investigan, lo interrogan, también lo destruya antes de que pueda germinar. Es posible que no seamos capaces de amar precisamente porque deseamos ser amados, porque queremos que el otro nos dé algo (amor), en lugar de aproximarnos a él sin exigencias y querer sólo su mera presencia.¨(Pp. 303-4)

¨El tiempo humano no da vueltas en redondo, sino que sigue una trayectoria recta. Ese es el motivo por el cual el hombre no puede ser feliz, porque la felicidad es el deseo de repetir.¨(Pp. 305)

¨¿cómo reconocer el momento en que el sufrimiento es ya inútil? ¿Cómo determinar el momento en que ya no vale la pena vivir?¨(Pp. 305)

¨El horror del comienzo se diluía y se convertía en tristeza.

El horror es un impacto, un momento de absoluta ceguera. El horror está desprovisto de toda huella de belleza. No vemos más que la intensa luz del acontecimiento desconocido que aguardamos. La tristeza, por el contrario, presupone que sabemos. Tomás y Teresa sabían qué les esperaba. La luz del horror perdió intensidad y el mundo empezó a verse bajo una iluminación azulada, tierna, que hacía las cosas más bellas de lo que eran antes.¨(Pp. 311)

¨Mi vida y la suya no están en contacto pero corren una al lado de la otra como dos paralelas.¨(Pp. 313)

¨Sentía ahora la misma extraña felicidad y la misma extraña tristeza que en aquella ocasión. Esa tristeza significaba: hemos llegado a la última estación. Esa felicidad significaba: estamos juntos. La tristeza era la forma y la felicidad, el contenido. La felicidad llenaba el espacio de la tristeza.¨(Pp. 320)