Being young is itself temporary, fragile, and ephemeral.
Tove Ditlevsen, Youth.
Being young is itself temporary, fragile, and ephemeral.
Tove Ditlevsen, Youth.
There was no logic to the way any hospital was laid out—they grew like cancers, with new wings metastasizing unexpectedly at the end of long tunneled halls.
Ann Patchett, The Dutch House.
Words fall short, yes, but sometimes their shadows can reach the unspeakable.
Yiyun Li, Where Reasons End.
I glance up at her, and her heartbreak is so acute it is like the sun—I can’t look at it.
Jayson Greene, Once More We Saw Stars.
What if life could be saved by clichés? What if life must be lived by clichés? Somewhere tomorrow and somewhere yesterday—never somewhere today but cliché-land.
Yiyun Li, Where Reasons End.
He hadn’t meant to create them. He simply spoke to them as he had to others before, looking directly into their eyes, giving utterance to what he believed to be right, unflinching, beautiful.
Nafkote Tamirat, The Parking Lot Attendant.
If I was sick of Christ, it was because I hadn’t been able to stop loving Him, this made-up ghost I still grived as though He’d been real.
R. O. Kwon, The Incendiaries.
Desde la ventana Amalfitano los observaba mordiéndose los labios, aunque ese gesto en él, y en ese preciso instante, no era un gesto de desesperación o de impotencia sino de profunda, inabarcable tristeza.
Roberto Bolaño, 2666.
I spilled time into the piano as I’d have put cash in a bank.
R. O. Kwon, The Incendiaries.
Y luego Espinoza oyó que alguien, el mismo estudiante, susurraba Morini… Morini… Morini, con una voz que no parecía la suya sino más bien la voz de un mago, o más concretamente, la voz de una maga, una adivina de la época del Imperio Romano, una voz que llegaba como el goteo de una fuente de basalto pero que no tardaba en crecer y desbordarse con un ruido ensordecedor, el ruido de miles de voces, el estruendo de un gran río salido de cauce que contiene, cifrado, el destino de todas las voces.
Roberto Bolaño, 2666.