DEAD FLIES ON THE SILLS OF sunny windows, weeds along the pathway, the kitchen empty. The house was melancholy, deceiving; it was like a cathedral where, amid the serenity, something is false, the sai...
We were moderate, we will never know what it is to spill out our lives...
There was a time, usually late in August, when summer struck the trees with dazzling power and they were rich with leaves but then became, suddenly one day, strangely still, as if in expectation and a...
The heart is in darkness, unknowing, like those animals in mines that have never seen the day. It has no loyalties, no hopes; it has its task.
THERE ARE THINGS I LOVE ABOUT marriage. I love the familiarity of it, Nedra said. It’s like a tattoo. You wanted it at the time, you have it, it’s implanted in your skin, you can’t get rid of it. You’...
Summer mornings, the light of the world pouring in and the silence. It was a barefoot life, the cool of the night on the floorboards, the green trees if you stepped outside, the first faint cries of t...
His mother is dead. She was a suicide. Her marriage was terrifying to her. In the center of it she found herself completely alone. During the last year she sent long telegrams to her sister, sometimes...
Great lovers lie in hell, the poet says. Even now, long afterwards, I cannot destroy the images. They remain within me like the yearnings of an addict. I need only hear certain words, see certain gest...
Dingen die je geschreven hebt, rijpen niet met je mee, zo lijkt me althans. De waarheid ervan kan bepaald zijn door de tijd, maar er bestaat niet zoiets als bij de tijd zijn wanneer de tijd voorbij is...
But knowledge does not protect one. Life is contemptuous of knowledge; it forces it to sit in the anterooms, to wait outside. Passion, energy, lies: these are what life admires. Still, anything can be...
Of Bryan, it might be said that he was candid about his wife and uncomplaining. He treated her offhandedly, as he might treat bad weather.
Love must wait; it must break one’s bones.
I am afraid of him, of all men who are successful in love.
He lived in it helplessly as we live in our bodies when we are older.
Events need their invitation, dissolutions their start.
Certain things I remember exactly as they were. They are merely discolored a bit by time, like coins in the pocket of a forgotten suit. Most of the details, though, have long since been transformed or...
«Pero el conocimiento no te protege. La vida desprecia el conocimiento, lo obliga a esperar sentado en la antesala, a esperar fuera. Pasión, energía, mentiras: eso es lo que la vida admira. No obstant...
Suddenly felt frightened. He was reaching that age, he was at the edge of it, when the world becomes suddenly more beautiful, when it reveals itself in a special way, in every detail, roof and wall, i...
Why is it so difficult to assemble those things that really matter in life and to dwell among them only? I am referring to certain landscapes, persons, beasts, books, rooms, meteorological conditions,...
The only light was a standing lamp by his chair, near his elbow was a drink. He liked to read with the silence and the golden color of the whiskey as his companions. He liked food, people, talk, but r...