Logic: yes, where is logic? Where is it, for instance, in the next moment of my story?
La vida no es sólo una suma y una resta. Es también la acumulación, la multiplicación de pérdidas, de fracasos.
Knygos tvirtina: ji padarė tai todėl ir todėl. Gyvenimas tvirtina: ji padarė tai. Tik knygose viskas paaiškinama, o gyvenime ničniekas. Nesistebiu, kad kai kurie žmonės teikia pirmenybę knygoms. Knygo...
Jedan drugi prijatelj je umro, iznenada, katastrofalno, pored pokretne trake za prtljag na nekom stranom aerodromu. Njegova žena je otišla po kolica, kada se vratila, gomila ljudi je bila okupljena ok...
It’s a condition of our mortality. We have codes of manners to allay and minimise it, jokes and routines, and so many forms of diversion and distraction. But there is panic and pandemonium waiting to...
It took a while, but I remember the moment – or rather, the suddenly arriving argument – which made it less likely that I would kill myself. I realised that, insofar as she was alive at all, she was a...
It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old,
It seemed such a brief while ago that they were all laughing at Professor Nikolayev's definition of a musicologist. Imagine we are eating scrambled eggs, the Professor used to say. My cook, Pasha, has...
It may be all right, you may have talked about it and agreed it was all right, but that’s not how sex works, is it? It’s where the unsayable is king; it’s where madness and surprise rule; it’s where t...
It is all just the universe doing its stuff, and we are the stuff it is being done to.
It had been a slow and painful business, discovering that the theory of love did not match the reality of life. It was like expecting to be able to write a symphony because you had once read a handboo...
Istorija yra nugalėtojų melas, tik reikia pridurti, jog tai ir nugalėtųjų saviapgaulė.
Isn’t the most reliable form of pleasure, Flaubert implies, the pleasure of anticipation? Who needs to burst into fulfilment’s desolate attic?
Ipak, ništa tako ne može da natera ljude da pametno misle kao dobra katastrofa.
Initially, you continue doing what you used to do with her, out of familiarity, love, the need for a pattern. Soon, you realise the trap you are in: caught between repeating what you did with her, but...
Indeed, isn’t the whole business of ascribing responsibility kind of a cop-out? We want to blame an individual so that everyone else is exculpated. Or we blame a historical process as a way of exonera...
In truth, he was just another man, behaving as men did in books, and she was just another woman for believing otherwise.
In an ideal world, a young man should not be an ironical person. At that age, irony prevents growth, stunts the imagination. It is best to start life in a cheerful and open state of mind, believing in...
If all your responses to a book have already been duplicated and expanded upon by a professional critic, then what point is there to your reading? Only that it’s yours.
I want a more difficult life, that's all. What I really want is a first-rate life. I may not get it, but the only chance I have lies in getting out of a second-rate life. I may fail completely, but I...