Died on July 11 — Quotes

As quoted in Antonio Socci, Il (vero) Dante che non sentite da Benigni, Lo Straniero (March 10, 2015)

I tell you that I learned from experience. Have you once consulted with yourself – have you once made your decision, don't leave it anymore, otherwise you will become like a weather-cock, and dissatisfied with yourself. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)

We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under . . . The fourth category, the rarest, is the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers.

Es posible que no seamos capaces de amar precisamente porque deseamos ser amados, porque queremos que el otro nos dé algo (amor), en lugar de aproximarnos a él sin exigencias y querer sólo su mera presencia

Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short.

But deep down she said to herself, Franz maybe strong, but his strength is directed outward; when it comes to the people he lives with, the people he's loves, he's weak. Franz's weakness is called goodness. Franz would never give Sabina orders. He would never command her, as Tomas had, to lay the mirror on the floor and walk back and forth on it naked. Not that he lacks sensuality; he simply lacks the strength to give orders.

There are things that can be accomplished only by violence. Physical love is unthinkable without violence.

What is flirtation? One might say that it is behavior leading another to believe that sexual intimacy is possible, while preventing that possibility from becoming a certainty. In other words, flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee.

وقد انتهـى به المطـاف إلى الاطمئنان إلى أن فكرة الحب الذى يحل فجأة كالصاعقة يحرر المرأة دفعـة واحدة من كل كابح وحشمة، وبما أنّها عفيفة وبريئة، فأنها تسارع إلى منح نفسها للعشيق مثلما تفعل أى فتاة داعـرة، بل أكثر من ذلك، فالحب حرّر بداخلهـا ينبـوع إلهام على درجة من القوة بحيث أن سلوكهـا العفـوى يمكن أن يشبه سلـوك امرأة ذات باع طويل فى الفجــور ..
فعبقـرية الحـب قد تعوّض الخبرة فى رمشة عيـن ..

As a party, we are better to risk losing without Donald Trump than trying to win with him. Enough already with Mister Trump.

I am a book I neither wrote nor read.

Adventure, the first great theme of the novel.

Our dreams prove that to imagine - to dream about things that have not happened - is among mankind's deepest needs.

"Pick me up," is the message of a person who keeps falling. Tomas kept picking her up, patiently.

Tomas turned the key and switched on the ceiling light. Teraza saw two beds pushed together, one of them flanked by a bedside table and a lamp. Up out of the lampshade, startled by the overhead light, flew a large nocturnal butterfly that began circling the room. The strains of the piano and violin rose up weakly from below.

While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and sharing motifs (the way Tomas and Sabina exchanged the motif of the bowler hat), but if they meet when they are older, like Franz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them.