Great Throughts Treasury

"Yes, it was too late, and Sabina knew she would leave Paris, move on, and on again, because were she to die here they would cover her up with a stone, and in the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable."

"Yes, if you're looking for infinity, just close your eyes!"

"Yes, it's a well-known fact about you: you're like death, you take everything."

"Yes, it's crazy. Love is either crazy or it's nothing at all."

"Yes, suddenly I saw it clearly: most people deceive themselves with a pair of faiths: they believe in eternal memory (of people, things, deeds, nations) and in re-dressibility (of deeds, mistakes, sins, wrongs). Both are false faiths. In reality the opposite is true: everything will be forgotten and nothing will be redressed. The task of obtaining redress (by vengeance or by forgiveness) will be taken over by forgetting. No one will redress the wrongs that have been done, but all wrongs will be forgotten."

"Yes, they have. It was back when they still didn't know each other by name. In the great hall of a mountain lodge, with people drinking and chattering around them, they exchanged a few commonplaces, but the tone of their voices made it clear that they wanted each other, and they withdrew into an empty corridor where, wordlessly, they kissed. She opened her mouth and pressed her tongue into Jean Marc's mouth, eager to lick whatever she would find inside. This zeal of their tongues was not a sensual necessity but an urgency to let each other know that they were prepared to make love, right away, instantly, fully and wildly and without losing a moment."

"Yes, the essence of every love is a child, and it makes no difference at all whether it has ever actually been conceived or born. In the algebra of love a child is the symbol of the magical sum of two beings."

"Yes, suddenly I saw this: most people are tricked by a double mistaken belief: believe in eternal memory (of people, of things, of acts, nations) and the possibility of repair (for the acts, errors, of sin, of injustice). Both beliefs are false. The reality is precisely the opposite: everything will be forgotten and nothing will be repaired. The role of repair (of revenge and forgiveness) is carried out oblivion. No repair the injustices that were committed, but all injustices will be forgotten."

"You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself."

"You cannot know what they should want, because living only one life and cannot compare to previous lives, nor to fix it in the next."

"You can never know what to want, because you only get one life and you cannot even compare it to previous lives or correct it in later life."

"You are beautiful, he said, but I will have to leave you."

"You know that only the embrace of death can appease him, that hug he fills the whole body and the whole and where finally find its greatness soul, knows that only death can avenge him and accuse him of murder who they mock."

"You can suffer nostalgia in the presence of the beloved if you glimpse a future where the beloved is no more."

"You know what happens when the two talk. One speaks, the other chimes in his words, just like me, I ... and starts to talk to him until the first fails himself to push just like me, I ... The sentence just like me, I ... seems to be encouraging some echo, a way to keep the thought of the other, but it's just bait: in fact it is a brutal revolt against a brutal attack, an effort to rid our own ear of slavery and violent to win the ear of an opponent."

"You know, I think that life should be taken the way it is... It's all in God's hands and we know nothing about tomorrow, by which I mean to accept life as it a means to accept unpredictable. A child is his collective image. The child is very unpredictable. You do not know what will come of it, what would you bring and that is why you have to accept. Otherwise live half live as a man who cannot swim and slapped the shore, though the real sea is deep."

"You see a young woman who moves away from her life and goes, forever inaccessible. Mesmerized, can do nothing but look at this piece of your life that moves away, can only look at it and suffer. Experience a whole new feeling called nostalgia."

"You know what it's like when two people start a conversation. First one of them does all the talking, the other breaks in with That's just like me, I... and goes on himself until his partner finds a chance to say, That's just like me, I... The That's just like me, I... 's may look like a form of agreement, a way of carrying the other party's idea a step further, but that is an illusion."

"You seem to be turning into the theme of all my paint?ings, she said. The meeting of two worlds. A double exposure. Showing through the outline of Tomas the libertine, incredibly, the face of a romantic lover. Or, the other way, through a Tristan, always thinking of his Tereza, I see the beautiful, betrayed world of the libertine."

"Young scary: Its? theater moves children on crutches and a high of more versatile clothing, and casting formats educated understand half understand, but they cling to them fanatically. History scary, too, who often uses the field of play for the immature, the field of play for Nero boy, the boy Bonaparte, for children electrified crowds that turn her emotions counterfeit and roles Simplified to reality disastrous."

"Young people are not to blame for that play, they are not ready, and put them in a finished world, and they have to keep it as ready. So quick to use shapes, patterns, patterns that they like, which are in vogue that they go and play."

"You think that just because it's already happened, the past is finished and unchangeable? Oh no, the past is cloaked in multicolored taffeta and every time we look at it we see a different hue."

"Youth is substantially better off: it is not burdened by guilt, and the revolution can accept young people in toto. The uncertainty of revolutionary times is an advantage for youth, because it is the world of the fathers that is challenged. How exciting to enter into the age of maturity over the shattered ramparts of the adult world!"

"Youth is a terrible thing: it is a stage trod by children in buskins and fancy costumes mouthing speeches they've memorized and fanatically believe but only half understand."

"You mean you don't want to fight the occupation of your country?' She would have liked to tell them that behind Communism, Fascism, behind all occupations and invasions lurks a more basic, pervasive evil and that the image of evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists ad shouting identical syllables in unison."

"Youth is terrible: it is a stage trod by children in buskins and a variety of costumes mouthing speeches they've memorized and fanatically believe but only half understand. And history is terrible because it so often ends up a playground for the immature; a playground for the young Nero, a playground for the young Bonaparte, a playground for the easily roused mobs of children whose simulated passions and simplistic poses suddenly metamorphose into a catastrophically real reality."