Quotes from Gabriela Mistral

Now what mattered to me no longer matters.

The night itself is riddled with her, wide with her, and alive with her. It seems that it has no word or other traveler, no other secret sign.

The night itself is riddled with her, wide with her, and alive with her.

If ever we two had a soul, let our soul —keep on walking and leave us behind.

She talks with an accent of savage seas. Her breathing is the breath of the wilderness, she has loved with a passion that makes her blanch, which she never mentions and which would be like the map of another star if she told us.

She loved only her lover and Iphigenia in the narrowness of her cold breast.

If it's all been dream and delirium may death ripen me in my dream.

Like cider and aged wine I was desired, desired like the sheer blue cascade that dazzles the eyes of the thirsty.

I killed a woman in me: one I did not love.

I could have not returned, and I've returned.

No happiness or pain, no more forgetting.

And he keeps listening to seas that love nothing but themselves. But maybe now he listens to nothing, stalled in forgetfulness and salt.

You saw her a hundred times, but not once did you look at her.

I don't want to know, but I would like to know it all from your own mouth, how she fell, what she said when she screamed and whether she cursed or blessed you.

Already we mistrust wakefulness; if we are dreaming, then let us dream, until our dream convinces us.

The past is falling to pieces like the beggar with his clown-clothes . . .

y en país sin nombre me voy a morir

I, Electra, fingering my garments and my face, for in hours I was changed. Now I am merely one who has killed.

This salt mist blots out everything that comforts and speaks to the traveler: roads, bridges, towns, trees. There's no face I might see and know, only the mist whose insistent hand runs over our faces and flanks.

Los rostros que yo amo, los míos, quedaron atrás, y mi alma los teje, los borda encima del mar

I stir the grasses where quail nestle, tenderly afraid. And through the countryside I go quietly, cautiously: I believe that trees and things have sleeping children over whom they hover watching.

Nadie se divorcia impunemente de la belleza.

No muestres compasión por nadie, aunque la sientas. Haz favores sin afectaros. Si vieran emoción e interés en tu rostro cuando les das limosna se abalanzarían sobre ti y desnudo te dejarían. Como a los canes, a los hombres no debe dárseles el alimento sino arrojársele.

Recordar un buen momento es sentirse feliz de nuevo.