Quotes from David Grossman

Als dat klopt, als je je echt tussen haakjes voelt, laat mij dan tenminste ook binnen. De rest van de wereld mag buiten blijven, laat de wereld maar de factor buiten de haakjes zijn waarmee wij binnen vermenigvuldigd worden.

Un tempo piangevo moltissimo ed ero pieno di speranze. Oggi rido parecchio, un riso disilluso.

Talvolta è più offensivo essere apprezzati per i motivi sbagliati che essere disprezzati per quelli giusti.

Se è davvero così, se ti senti tra parentesi, permettimi allora di infilarmici dentro, e che tutto il mondo rimanga fuori, che sia solo l'esponente al di fuori della parentesi e ci moltiplichi al suo interno.

She breathes as if he had held her hand and helped her jump over the chasm of that scar.

You, who promised, when you asked for my hand, to look at me always with kind eyes. The eyes of a loving witness, you said. And no one has ever said anything lovelier to me.

woman who claimed to want only the best for me, and yet she gave birth to me!

Take it from me, the best way to be appreciated somewhere is to not be there, you get me?

She had not yet sensed the pea beneath the pile of mattresses, the pea that belonged to the little brown-skinned girl who used to make up stories to keep her soul pinned down inside her or, at times, to let it fly—stories whose most exciting element was the word "suddenly" at the beginning of every sentence and before each description: Suddenly, suddenly, her heart would leap when she whispered to herself, suddenly .

E la cosa incredibile è che ho visto come fuggivi senza muoverti dal tuo posto, sfruttando quella momentanea distrazione per sparire.

Si sentiva libero. [...] Libero come una stella che devia dall'orbita e solca il firmamento lasciandosi dietro una scia sfavillante.

Hai bisogno di uno con una mano grande così. [...] Uno che se ne sta con la mano alzata, forte, ferma, come la statua della Libertà, ma senza quel cono gelato. Solo con la mano aperta, in alto e allora tu... [...] tu da lontano, da qualsiasi punto della terra, vedrai quella mano e saprai che lì potrai posarti e riposare.

È il segreto che ti sussurro all'orecchio già da un mese: noi due non siamo vivi! Voglio dire, non in un luogo in cui vigono le leggi ordinarie che regolano i rapporti tra le persone, tantomeno tra uomo e donna. Dove siamo, allora? Non m'interessa saper dove, perché dargli un nome? Sarebbero comunque nomi "loro", nomi tradotti, e con te voglio una costituzione diversa di cui saremo noi a fissare le leggi.

and I discovered my limitations, and mainly I learned that there was a price to pay for that childhood (it turns out there's no such thing as a free starvation), and that in the meantime the world had filled up with other children who hadn't wasted all their strength on just surviving but had simply grown and opened and deepened, and that only in her innocent eyes could I still be considered worth anything.

The passing time is painful. I have lost the art of moving simply, naturally, within it. I am swept back against its flow. Angry, vindictive, it pierces me all the time, all the time with its spikes.

That night, on a narrow bed in a rented room in a strange city, a dream was dreamed.

I saw for real that he wasn't worth anything without her, and that all his power in life came from her being with him. He turned into half a human in that one instant.

He falls quiet again and tries to understand how he can be saying these things, how it can be that his dark words are coming out into the light and yet he is still alive. At once he storms the doorway that has suddenly opened for him in the endless corridor in which he has been bumping around for years; words spill out, cut off, confused, ashamed, squeezing out.

His questions led me to comprehend that I had a rare treasure: life experience.

Remember that every person only lives for a short time, and you have to make that time pleasant for him.

How could she be feeling the very same streams that rushed around within him? She thought, as they overflowed and lapped inside her too. She had never felt the inside of another person this way.

Of course. And you said I was one of a kind, and that if I cried 'cause of them, then you see it upside down, and it's like I'm laughing 'cause of me.

A single moment that lasts a lifetime, still poisoning anything I come close to, to this day. Every person I touch.

And he, in his way, talked with her about everything, and shared with her everything, he thought would not be too painful for her, even though she was gladly willing to pay the pain levy, which was sometimes unbearable, only so that he would not for a moment stop the flow of his talk with her, so he would not filter or protect her or think twice.