Quotes About Reality

Nessa altura comecei a descobrir a incómoda verdade: a matéria-prima da literatura não é a felicidade mas a infelicidade humana, e os escritores, tal como os abutres, preferem alimentar-se de carne putrefacta.

De todos modos, escribir lo que no se vivía para hacerse la idea de vivirlo, llevaba ya implícito un castigo: la sensación de fracaso y frustración con que terminaban siempre los juegos mentirosos de sus diarios. (y también los hechos vividos, por lo demás) Pero, ahora, esos juegos irresponsables habían puesto en manos del enemigo un arma formidable para envilecer su nombre y su memoria

Ese objeto, anodino en la realidad real, transfigurado prodigiosamente por el lenguaje, es la demostración de algo que descubrió Flaubert a los veinticuatro años y que se apresuró a participar a su amigo Le Poittevin: «Pour qu'une chose soit intéressante, il suffit de la regarder longtemps».[53]

No, life had ceased to be logical, and therefore nothing was absurd. It was life: one had to accept it as it was or kill oneself.

Vale la pena leer con cuidado esta cita juvenil; contiene tres elementos precoces de su teoría de la novela: (1) que el escritor se sirve sin escrúpulos de toda la realidad; (2) la ambición totalizadora y (3) la idea de que la novela debe mostrar, no juzgar: «Il

amaba tanto las ideas y se movía en ellas con tanta solvencia, fuera un convencido de que son éstas las que deben someterse si entran en contradicción con la realidad humana, pues, cuando ocurre al revés, las calles se llenan de guillotinas y paredones de fusilamiento y comienza el reinado de los censores y los policías.

La ficción es una mentira que encubre una profunda verdad; ella es la vida que no fue, la que los hombres y mujeres de una época dada quisieron tener y no tuvieron y por eso debieron inventarla. p. 13. Cartas a un joven novelista.

Las cosas y los seres de la realidad que me han conmovido más han sido los que más se acercaban a la literatura.

Mi país, nuestros países, son, en un sentido profundo, más ficciones que realidades.

Happiness isn't what happens when you whistle along, pretending bad things don't exist. . . Happiness is earned, like everything else. It's achieved.

What do you do when you're in love with the last man in the world you can have? You plan a life, a real life, without him.

Within every elaborate lie, a kernel of truth.

Could something be real when all evidence of it was gone? Was something categorically true if it lived on only in your head, same as your dreams?

Everyone has a Cordova story, whether they like it or not.

You think you know everything. But you don't. Life and people are right in front of you and you act superior and make jokes but it's just a cover for the fact that you're scared.

We swear we see each other, but all we are ever able to make out is a tiny porthole view of an ocean. We think we remember the past, but our memories are as fantastic and flimsy as dreams. It's so easy to hate the pretty one, worship the genius, love the rockstar, trust the good girl. That's never their only story.

There it is," he'd say reverentially. "The box represents the mysterious threshold between reality and make-believe. [..] Because every one of us has our box, a dark chamber stowing the thing that lanced our heart. It contains what you do everything for, strive for, wound everything around you. And if it were opened, would anything be set free? No. For the impenetrable prison with the impossible lock is your own head.

A Tornado knocks a house down, killing the owner, and it's a tragedy. Then you learn a serial killer lived there and the same act becomes a miracle. The truth about what happens to us in this world keeps changing. Always. It never stops. Sometimes not even after death.

We are under an invincible blindness as to the real and true nature of things

she was flighty and poor, a French studies major who quoted Simone de Beauvoir. She wiped her runny nose on her coat sleeve when it was snowing, stuck her head out of car windows the way dogs do, the wind fireworking her hair. That woman was gone now. Not that it was her fault. Vast fortunes did that to people. It took them to the cleaners, cruelly starched and steam-pressed them so all their raw edges, all the dirt and hunger and guileless laughter, were ironed out. Few survived real money.

It is adorable and healthily childlike secretly to believe in fairy tales, but the instant one articulates such viewpoints to other people, one goes from darling to dumbo, from childlike to chillingly out of touch with reality.

They looked happy, but, of course, that didn't say much. Everyone smiles for a photograph.

I'd actually questioned my sanity, wondered if this was it: the substandard past few years had finally led to a mental break with reality, and now, floodgates open, there'd be no limit to the fiends I'd encounter. They'd simply crawl out of my head, down into the world.

It was never the act itself but our own understanding of it that defeated us, over and over again.