Quotes from César Aira

Like in a dream, everything seemed to be on the point of vanishing but at the same time ablaze with persistent reality.

Yo reservaba mi interioridad, mientras él ponía la suya a la vista. Ocultar algo es tener algo que ocultar. Yo no lo tenía, pero ocultaba, asomaba al mundo como quien viene de enterrar un tesoro.

Pensé: el mundo en el que uno se despierta es otro que el mundo en el que uno se durmió. Basta con abrir los ojos.

the transformation would be accomplished not in the dimension of time but in that of meaning.

Who hasn't succumbed to a hopeless feeling more powerful than all the strength one might possibly muster, wondering how many first steps will have to be taken, how many actions performed and words spoken, how many labyrinths will have to be negotiated in order, finally, to reach the moment at which reality begins to happen.

A ferramenta das vanguardas, sempre conforme minha visão pessoal, é o procedimento. (...) Construtivismo, escritura automática, ready-made, dodecafonismo, cut-up, acaso, indeterminação. Os grandes artistas do século XX não são os que fizeram obra, mas aqueles que inventaram procedimentos para que a obra se fizesse sozinha, ou não se fizesse.

It was one of those cases in which the real is irreplaceable and not representable. Unfortunately for them, the real was also instantaneous and without future.

She belonged to the common type: without ever really thinking it over in detail, she had considered herself a woman like the rest, with no reason for anything to happen to her that didn't also happen to all other women. It was as if this sort of thing happened to someone else, to an absolute someone else, which is to say, as if it didn't happen to anyone.

The sadness inherent in any memory comes from the fact that its object is forgetting.

A memory is a luminous miniature, like the hologram of the princess, in that movie, that the faithful robot carried in his circuits from galaxy to galaxy. The sadness inherent in any memory comes from the fact that its object is forgetting. All movement, the great horizon, the journey, is a spasm of forgetting, which bends in the bubble of memory. Memory is always portable, it is always in the hands of a wandering automaton.

Literature is a toy for adults; my books are toys for adults who have read Lautréamont.

I have not the least sympathy for these useless and destructive pastimes, football and politics.

In barbaric lands like the Americas, writers produced their best work before learning the craft, and nine times out of ten, their book was the strongest, as well as being, in general, the only one they wrote.

Lo que sí, debía de estar soñando como nunca. Uno sueña más en camas ajenas que en la suya, porque tiene más perturbaciones físicas que verosimilizar.

Impunity: it's always impunity that gets you dancing. What did I care about being ridiculous? I was on my way to earning a superior kind of impunity, and nobody knew it.

Her tone spoke less of nostalgia than reproach, of feelings long coveted and repeated whenever she had the chance.

At this stage of my life, I had reached the conclusion that I would never be the protagonist of any story. The only thing I could hope for was to make an appearance in somebody else's.

Una gran exclamación recorrió a la multitud, la exclamación se transformó en risas, en aplausos, y fue la verosimilización definitiva de la aventura. El fútbol era la realidad infinita que los abarcaba a todos, el Gran Sueño que daba continuidad a sus días y densidad narrativa a sus vidas.

A bird flashed across the empty sky. A cart immobile on the horizon, like a midday star. How could a plain like this be remade? Yet someone would, no doubt, attempt to repeat their journey, sooner or later. This thought made them feel they should bet at once very careful and very daring: careful not to make a mistake that would render the repetition impossible; daring, so that the journey would be worth repeating, like an adventure.

Literature is the queen of the arts —the greatest of them all, because it embraces them all. When you write, you are making music, painting, drawing, cinema...

Language has shaped our expectations so extensively that real reality has become the most detached and incomprehensible one of all.

Delia Siffoni já era louca, e o desaparecimento de seu filho único a deixou louca. Entrou num frenesi. Espetáculo prodigioso, cartão-postal perene, cinema transcendental, cena das cenas: ver uma louca ficar louca. É como ver Deus.[...]

La reina se decía experimentada en la pasión, en cuyos fuegos se había quemado muchas veces;

La tristeza inherente al recuerdo proviene de que su objeto es el olvido.