Juan C > Juan's Quotes

“distance is not for the fearful, it's for the bold. It's for those who are willing to spend a lot of time alone in exchange for a little time with the one they love. It's for those who know a good thing when they see it, even if they don't see it nearly enough”
― Meghan Daum

“The pause makes you think the song will end. And then the song isn't really over, so you're relieved. But then the song does actually end, because every song ends, obviously, and THAT. TIME. THE. END. IS. FOR. REAL.”
― Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

“You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion. ... The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that -- well, lucky you.”
― Philip Roth, American Pastoral

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind

“Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'Here are our monsters,' without immediately turning the monsters into pets.”
― Jacques Derrida

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Si dejas obra, muere tranquilo, confiando en unos pocos buenos amigos. Nunca permitas que te vuelvan persona mayor, hombre respetable. Nunca dejes de ser niño, aunque tengas los ojos en la nuca y se te empiecen a caer los dientes. Tus padres te tuvieron. Que tus padres te alimenten siempre, y págales con mala moneda. A mi qué. Jamás ahorres. Nunca te vuelvas una persona seria. Haz de la irreflexión y de la contradicción tu norma de conducta. Elimina las treguas recoge tu hogar en el daño, el exceso y la tembladera.
Todo es tuyo. A todo tienes derecho y cóbralo caro.”
― Andrés Caicedo, ¡Que viva la música!

“They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.”
― Philip Larkin, High Windows

“Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order.”
― Samuel Beckett

“Me miró, desde su altura, de una manera tal que me dio vuelta todo lo que tenía en el alma. Si alguien me mirara así cada tres o cuatro meses, estoy seguro de que mi vida sería digna de una biografía en varios tomos. En la mirada esa había de todo: agresión y ternura, desafío y ruego, erotismo, desdén, caricias, puñales, hielo, fuego, música…
Me sentí como si un caballo me hubiera pateado la cabeza con las herraduras de los dos cascos traseros al mismo tiempo, pero dándose maña para hacerme sentir que me estaba haciendo un favor.”
― Mario Levrero, Fauna / Desplazamientos

“It is in our relations with other people that we gain a sense of ourselves; it's that, pretty much, that makes relations with other people unbearable.”
― Michel Houellebecq, Platform

“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.”
― Dylan Thomas

“Psychoanalysis has taught that the dead – a dead parent, for example – can be more alive for us, more powerful, more scary, than the living. It is the question of ghosts.”
― Jaques Derrida

“Literature is news that stays news.”
― Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading

“Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.”
― Susan Sontag

“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

“Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.”
― William Butler Yeats, The Land of Heart's Desire

“Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.”
― T. S. Eliot

“One thing in my defense, not that it matters: I know something Carter never knew, or Helene, or maybe you. I know what “nothing” means, and keep on playing. Why, BZ would say. Why not, I say.”
― Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays

“For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken. It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.”
― D.H. Lawrence

“Sightseeing is the art of disappointment.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Silverado Squatters

“You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that? And I said,
Where can I put it down?”
― Anne Carson, Glass, Irony and God

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
― Simone Weil

“Look at 'em,' he said. 'Goddam fools.' 'Who?' said Ginnie. 'I don't know. Anybody.”
― J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories

“But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if
evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows
disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the
shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and living beings.
Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because
of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You're stupid.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Que fuera imposible no era un motivo suficiente para no hacerlo, y eso yo lo sabìa, pero me daba pereza intentar lo imposible.”
― Mario Levrero, La novela luminosa

“Shaving is a way to start the workday by ritually not cutting your throat when you’ve the chance.”
― Ben Lerner, 10:04