Quotes About Experience

Chegando a qualquer nova cidade o viajante reencontra o seu passado que já não sabia que tinha: a estranheza do que já não somos ou já não possuímos espera-nos ao caminho nos lugares estranhos e não possuídos.

A conversation with Miss Zwida would lead me inevitably to talk about seashells, and I cannot decide what attitude to take, whether to pretend absolute ignorance or to call on a remote experience now vague; it is my relationship with my life, consisting of things never concluded and half erased, that the subject of seashells forces me to contemplate; hence the uneasiness that finally puts me to flight.

Who are we, if not a combination of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? Each life is an encyclopaedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles, and everything can be constantly reshuffled and reordered in every conceivable way.

Do you want to demonstrate that the living also have a wordless language, with which books cannot be written but which can only be lived, second by second, which cannot be recorded or remembered? First comes this wordless language of living bodies...then the words books are written with, and attempts to translate that first language are vain...

No, memory is true as long as you do not set it, as long as it is not enclosed in a form.

La Ciudad es una para el que pasa sin entrar, y otra para el que está preso en ella; una es la ciudad a la que se llega la primera vez, otra la que se deja para no volver, cada una merece un nombre diferente.

The past is like a tapeworm, constantly growing, which I carry curled up inside me, and it never loses its rings no matter how hard I try to empty my guts in every WC, English-style or Turkish, or in the slop jars of prison or the bedpans of hospitals or the latrines of camps, or simply in the bushes, taking a good look first to make sure no snake will pop out, like that time in Venezuela.

Si arriva a un momento della vita in cui tra la gente che si è conosciuta i morti sono più dei vivi. E la mente si rifiuta di accettare altre fisionomie, altre espressioni: su tutte le facce nuove che incontra, imprime i vecchi calchi, per ognuna trova la maschera che s'adatta di più.

That's how it is: everything women have been told about love has been wrong. They've been told all sorts of things, but all wrong. And their experiences, all imprecise. And yet, they trust the things they're told, not the experiences. [...] And yet, it's easier for women. Life flows in them, a great river, in them, the perpetuators, nature is sure and mysterious, in them.

an archer, the moment he thinks he's experienced, is lost; every lion we encounter in our brief life is different from every other lion; woe to us if we stop to make comparisons, to deduce our movements from norms and premises.

Ba???la beni efendimiz: er geç o r?ht?ma ç?kaca??m ku?kusuz," der Marco, "ama dönüp sana anlatamayaca??m onu. Böyle bir kent var, ve de basit bir s?rr? var: yaln?z gidi?leri bilir, dönü?leri bilmez.

Yolcu sahip oldu?u tenhay? tan?r, sahip olmad??? ve olamayaca?? kalabal??? ke?federek.

Pensé: —Uno llega a un momento de la vida en que de la gente que ha conocido son mas los muertos que los vivos. Y la mente se niega a aceptar otras fisonomías, otras expresiones: en todas las caras nuevas que encuentra, imprime los viejos calcos, para cada una encuentra la máscara que más se adapta.

Your reading is no longer solitary: you think of the Other Reader, who, at this same moment, is also opening the book; and there, the novel to be read is superimposed by a possible novel to be lived, the continuation of your story with her, or better still, the beginning of a possible story.

Cosimo did not yet know love, and what is any experience without that? What point is there in risking life, when the real flavor of life is as yet unknown?

Ogni vita è un enciclopedia, una biblioteca, un campionario di stili, dove tutto può essere continuamente rimescolato e riordinato in tutti i modi possibili

Apart from religious ceremonies, triduums, novenas, gardening, harvesting, vintaging, whippings, slavery, incest, fires, hangings, invasion, sacking, rape and pestilence, we have had no experience. What can a poor nun know of the world?

Because in this way all I did was to accumulate past after past behind me, multiplying the pasts, and if one life was too dense and ramified and embroiled for me to bear it always with me, imagine so many lives, each with its own past and the pasts of the other lives that continue to become entangled one with the others.

Il viaggiatore riconosce il poco che è suo, scoprendo il molto che non ha avuto e non avrà.

Hep ba??n arkaya dönük mü ilerlersin sen- ya da: -Gördü?ün ?ey hep geride kalan m?d?r?- ya da daha do?rusu: -Yaln?z geçmi?e mi senin yolculu?un?

I thought: "You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask.

At this point we must remind ourselves that the idea that the world is made up of weightless atoms surprises us because we have experienced the weight of things. Similarly, we could not admire the lightness of language if we had not also learned to admire language endowed with weight.

Arrivando a ogni nuova città il viaggiatore ritrova un suo passato che non sapeva più d'avere. [...[ Oramai, da quel suo passato vero o ipotetico, lui è escluso; non può fermarsi; deve proseguire fino a un'altra città dove lo aspetta un altro suo passato, o qualcosa che forse era stato un suo possibile futuro e ora è il presente di qualcun altro. I futuri non realizzati sono solo rami del passato: rami secchi.

L'altrove è uno specchio in negativo. Il viaggiatore riconosce il poco che è suo,scoprendo il molto che non ha avuto e non avrà.