Quotes from Javier Cercas

Odiar a alguien es como beberte un vaso de veneno creyendo que así vas a matar a quien odias.

He (Antonio Machado) was old, weary and ill, and he no longer believed in Franco's defeat. He wrote 'This is the end; any day now Barcelona will fall. For the strategists, for the politicians, for the historians, it is all clear: we have lost the war. But in human terms, I am not so sure. Perhaps we have won.

It is, but a virtue taken to extremes is a vice. If one does not understand there are things more important than the truth one doesn't understand how important the truth is.

I think it was probably both the coincidence and the beer that made Miralles say at some point that we were going to end up the same, defeated and alone and punch-drunk in a dead-end city, pissing blood before going into the ring to fight to the death against our own shadows in an empty stadium.

Marco lives in a fantasy world, one that's more interesting and more fun than reality. That's the definition of being insane, surely?" said my son, Raul "I suppose so," I said. "It's like Don Quixote.

If there's one thing I hate the Communists for, Your Excellency,' Foxa once said to Franco, 'it's for obliging me to join the Falange.

I was about to tell her that Miralles hadn't fought in one war, but many, but I couldn't, because I suddenly saw Miralles walking across the Libyan desert towards the Murzuk oasis- young, ragged, dusty and annonymous, carrying the tricolour flag of a country not his own, of a country that is all countries and also the country of liberty and which only exists because he and four Moors and a black guy are raising that flag as they keep walking onwards, onwards, ever onwards.

All good tales are true tales, at least for those who read them, which is all that counts.

la mitad de una novela la pone el que la escribe, y la otra mitad el que la lee.

Naturally, I asked him what it'd been like to live through Pinochet's coup and the fall of Allende. Naturally, he regarded me with an expression of utter boredom; then he said: 'Like a Marx Brothers' movie, but with corpses. Unimaginable pandemonium.

la justicia no es sólo cuestión de fondo. Sobre todo, es cuestión de forma.

En aquel momento tuve por vez primera la intuición falaz de que el pasado no es un lugar estable sino cambiante, permanentemente alterado por el futuro, y de que por tanto nada de lo ya acontecido es irreversible.

Of course, if you ask, nobody was there when they torched the churches.

öldüÄŸünde kaybolup gitmemek için,kimin hat?rlay???na sar?lacakt??

en eso consiste la vida civilizada: en aprender a convivir de manera razonable con la frustración.

ayr?ca gerçek bir yazar asla yazarl??? b?rakmaz,yazmasa da b?rakmaz.

la felicidad de los demás fastidia

Kahramanlar, ancak öldüklerinde ya da öldürüldüklerinde kahraman olurlar. Gerçek kahramanlar savaÅŸta doÄŸarlar, savaÅŸta ölürler. YaÅŸayan kahraman yoktur, delikanl?. Bütün kahramanlar ölüdür.

El único éxito de verdad consiste en no morirse, en vivir para siempre, cosa que de momento no parece que esté a nuestro alcance. El éxito es una cosa realmente estupenda, pero la única realidad es el fracaso.

La gente olvida más deprisa que nunca, quizá porque los periodistas olvidan más deprisa que nunca. Viven al día. No tienen tiempo de mirar atrás, y por eso no entienden lo que pasa delante, ni siquiera lo que pasa delante de sus narices.

Hacer política consiste en ceder en lo accesorio para no ceder en lo esencial.

Estás de broma o qué? —pregunta a su vez, mirando a Melchor con su cara inconfundible de pedrada—. Pero ¿cómo quieres que crea en un sistema político que le da el derecho de voto a un individuo como yo?

Memory is threatening to replace history in an era saturated with memory. This is bad news. Memory and history are notionally opposites: memory is individual, partial and subjective; history is collective and aspires to be comprehensive and objective. Memory and history are also complementary: history gives sense to memory; memory is a tool, an ingredient, a part of history. But memory is not history.

All wars are full of stories that sound like fiction.