She felt attracted by their weakness as by vertigo. She felt attracted by it because she felt weak herself. Again she began to feel jealous and again her hands shook. When Tomas noticed it, he did wha...
She began to teeter as she walked, fell almost daily, bumped into things or, at the very least, dropped objects. She was in the grip of an insuperable longing to fall. She lived in a constant state of...
Remembering our past, carrying it around with us always, may be the necessary requirement for maintaining, as they say, the wholeness of the self. To ensure that the self doesn’t shrink, to see that i...
Promatra njihova usta koja se otvaraju sva istodobno, usta koja melju, izbacuju riječi i bez prestanka praskaju u smijeh (zagonetka: kako se žene koje se međusobno ne slušaju mogu smijati onome što go...
Pravda, u stvari, i ne treba da nas previše zanima. Pravda nije ljudska stvar. Postoji pravda slijepih i krutih zakona, a osim nje možda i neka viša pravda, ali tu ja ne razumijem. Uvijek mi se činilo...
Pero cuando a uno le llama la atención una mujer, hace todo lo posible para entrar en relación con ella, al menos de un modo indirecto, mediante alguna estratagema, para tomar contacto al menos desde...
Our day-to-day life is bombarded with fortuities or, to be more precise, with the accidental meetings of people and events we call coincidences (...) They are composed like music. Guided by his sense...
Or take an instance from the student’s childhood: His parents made him take violin lessons. He was not very gifted and his teacher would interrupt him to criticize his mistakes in a cold, unbearable v...
O acaso tem seus sortilégios, a necessidade não. Para que um amor seja inesquecível, é preciso que os acasos se encontrem nele desde o primeiro instante como os pássaros nos ombros de São Francisco de...
Nós compreendemos há muito tempo que não era mais possível mudar este mundo, nem remodelá-lo, nem impedir sua infeliz trajetória para a frente. Havia uma única resistência possível: não levá-lo a séri...
No matter what people say, life is marvelous, if you want to know who gets mu goats, it's those killjoy pessimists, even if I have plenty to complain about, you don't hear a peep out of me, what for....
Missão, Tereza, é uma palavra idiota. Eu não tenho missão. Ninguém tem missão. E é um alívio enorme perceber que somos livres, que não temos missão.
Mesmerized, all she can do is watch this piece of her life move off; all she can do is watch it and suffer. She is experiencing a brand-new feeling called nostalgia. That feeling, that irrepressible y...
Men who pursue a multitude of women fit neatly into two categories. Some seek their own subjective and unchanging dream of a woman in all women. Others are prompted by a desire to possess the endless...
Man passes through the present with his eyes blindfolded. He is permitted merely to sense and guess at what he is actually experiencing. Only later when the cloth is untied can he glance at the past a...
Man can only be certain about the present moment. But is that quite true either? Can he really know the present? Is he in a position to make any judgment about it? Certainly not. For how can a person...
Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).
Kitsch is a German word born in the middle of the sentimental nineteenth century, and from German is entered all Western languages. Repeated use, however, has obliterated its original metaphysical mea...
Jealousy isn't a pleasant quality, but if it isn't overdone (and if it's combined with modesty), apart from its inconvenience there's even something touching about it.
Jealousy is like a raging toothache. One cannot do anything when one is jealous, not even sit down. Once can only come and go. Back and forth.