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)
“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)
“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)
“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)
“...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)
“…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)
“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)
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