Alberto Quotes

اعطتني القراءة عذرًا مقبولًا لعزلتي، بل ربما اعطت مغزىً لتلك العزلة المفروضة عليّ

Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.

At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.

Good writers are monotonous, like good composers. They keep trying to perfect the one problem they were born to understand.

And we all know love is a glass which makes even a monster appear fascinating.

Each book was a world unto itself, and in it I took refuge.

I wanted to live among books.

Books may not change our suffering, books may not protect us from evil, books may not tell us what is good or what is beautiful, and they will certainly not shield us from the common fate of the grave. But books grant us myriad possibilities: the possibility of change, the possibility of illumination.

In the light, we read the inventions of others; in the darkness we invent our own stories.

In my fool hardy youth, when my friends were dreaming of heroic deeds in the realms of engineering and law, finance and national politics, I dreamt of becoming a librarian.

She’s kept her love for him as alive as the summer they first met. In order to do this, she’s turned life away. Sometimes she subsists for days on water and air. Being the only known complex life-form to do this, she should have a species named after her. Once Uncle Julian told me how the sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti said that sometimes just to paint a head you have to give up the whole figure. To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you’re limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky. My mother did not choose a leaf or a head. She chose my father. And to hold on to a certain feeling, she sacrificed the world.

Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth.

Ultimately, the number of books always exceeds the space they are granted.

The love of libraries, like most loves, must be learned.

أنا أعرف تماماً أنّ شيئاً ما يموت في داخلي عندما أستغني عن كتبي, وأن ذكرياتي تعود إليها دوماً وأبداً وتصيبني بحنين مؤلم للغاية

I have no feelings of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my books have unlimited patience. They will wait for me till the end of my days.

I don't remember ever feeling lonely; in fact, on the rare occasions when I met other children I found their games and their talk far less interesting than the adventures and dialogues I read in my books.

You can't think on purpose about somebody or something. Either you think about them naturally or you don't think at all.

كنت أنظر دوماً إلى الروايات كمنتوج تافه , إلاّ أنني اكتشفتُ أخيراً أنها مفيدة للغاية ضد الكآبة

كان سقراط مقتنعاً بأنّ القراءة لا يمكن أن توقظ داخل القارئ إلاّ ما كان القارئ يعرفه سلفا وبأنّ الحكمة لا يمكن الحصول عليها من أحرف صمّاء ميتة .

I like to imagine that, on the day after my last, my library and I will crumble together, so that even when I am no more I'll still be with my books.

What comes, when it comes, will be what it is.

If every library is in some sense a reflection of its readers, it is also an image of that which we are not, and cannot be.

At night, here in the library, the ghosts have voices.

My books hold between their covers every story I've ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may one day read; they fill the space around me with ancient and new voices.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who are dreamers and those who are being dreamed.

We can imagine the books we'd like to read, even if they have not yet been written, and we can imagine libraries full of books we would like to possess, even if they are well beyond our reach, because we enjoy dreaming up a library that reflects every one of our interests and every one of our foibles--a library that, in its variety and complexity, fully reflects the reader we are.

Life happened because I turned the pages.

But at night, when the library lamps are lit, the outside world disappears and nothing but the space of books remains in existence.

When you aren't sincere you need to pretend, and by pretending you end up believing yourself; that's the basic principle of every faith.

كان تحمسي مفرطاً إلى درجة أني كنتُ أظن سأصبح إنسانة غير سعيدة إن لم أعثر دوماً على كتاب جديد أقرأه

Readers, censors know, are defined by the books they read.

As centuries of dictators have known, an illiterate crowd is the easiest to rule; since the craft of reading cannot be untaught once it has been acquired, the second-best recourse is to limit its scope.

أعطتني القراءة عذرا مقبولا لعزلتي، بل ربما أعطت مغزى لتلك العزلة المفروضة علي.

نحن نعرف لماذا نقرأ حتى عندما لا نعرف كيف نقرأ في الوقت نفسه نحتفظ بالعالم الظاهري للنص ونتمسك بفعل القراءة إننا نقرأ لأننا نريد العثور على النهاية فقط لأننا نريد مواصلة القراءة نحن نقرأ كالكشافة الذين يقتفون الخطى ناسين كل ما هو حولهم من أشياء نقرأ شاردي الذهن متجاوزين بعض الصفحات نقرأ باحتقار ، بإعجاب ، بملل ،بانزعاج ، بحماس وبشوق في بعض الأحيان تعترينا فرحة غامرة مفاجئة دون أن ندري ما هو السبب

غير أن القراءة بالفراش تعتبر أكثر من مجرد تمضية للوقت, إنها تمثل نوعاً من الوحدة فالمرء يتراجع مركزاً على ذاته ويترك الجسد يرتاح,ويجعل من نفسه بعيداً لا يمكن الوصول إليه مخفياً عن العالم

I’d like to have enough time and quiet To think about absolutely nothing, To not ever feel myself living, To only know myself in others’ eyes, reflected.

Unpacking books is a revelatory activity.

Darkness promotes speech.

Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons.

In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long.

Se depois de eu morrer, quiserem escrever a minha biografia, não há nada mais simples. Têm só duas datas: a da minha nascença e a da minha morte. Entre uma e outra coisa, todos os dias são meus

This thought strengthened in me my belief that all men, without exception, deserve to be pitied, if only because they are alive.

Our society accepts the book as a given, but the act of reading -- once considered useful and important, as well as potentially dangerous and subversive -- is now condescendingly accepted as a pastime, a slow pastime that lacks efficiency and does not contribute to the common good.

Accept the universe As the gods gave it to you. If the gods wanted to give you something else They’d have done it. If there are other matters and other worlds There are.

Estamos hechos para amar. Maldigo a nuestro diseñador, pero así es.

Old books that we have known but not possessed cross our path and invite themselves over. New books try to seduce us daily with tempting titles and tantalizing covers.

في القرن الثالث عشر كتب أحدهم على حافة مجلد يضم التواريخ الكنسية : " عند قراءة الكتب عليك أن تعتاد على ملاحظة المعنى أكثر من الكلمات , والتمسك بالثمار وليس بالقشور

I'm one of my sensations.

I don’t regret anything I was before because I still am. I only regret not having loved you. Put your hands in mine And let’s be quiet, surrounded by life.

I don’t have a philosophy: I have senses... If I talk about Nature, it’s not because I know what it is, But because I love it, and that’s why I love it, Because when you love you never know what you love, Or why you love, or what love is. Loving is eternal innocence, And the only innocence is not thinking.

It’s stranger than every strangeness And the dreams of all the poets And the thoughts of all the philosophers, That things are really what they seem to be And there’s nothing to understand.

It’s helpful to keep in mind Alberto Brandolini’s Bullshit Asymmetry Principle or what’s sometimes known as Brandolini’s law: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.

She’s a manner of speaking. Even the flowers don’t come back, or the green leaves. There are new flowers, new green leaves. There are other beautiful days. Nothing comes back, nothing repeats itself, because everything is real.

Digestion of words as well; I often read aloud to myself in my writing corner in the library, where no one can hear me, for the sake of better savouring the text, so as to make it all the more mine.

I had as many doubts as anyone else. Standing on the starting line, we're all cowards.

One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries.

But a reader's ambition knows no bounds.

أنا كائنٌ كان، وكائنٌ سيكون، وكائنٌ مُتعَبٌ الآن

The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.

أثناء النهار ، أكتب ، وأنتقل بين الكتب متصفحا ، معيدا ترتيبها ، أفسح للحديث منها مكانا ، وأعيد تشكيل الاقسام لتوفير حيز جديد. الكتب الجديدة الوافدة يرحب بها بعد فترة من الفحص. إذا كان الكتاب مستعملا ، أدع كل الإشارات التي دونت عليه على حالها ، الآثار التي يتركها القارئ السابق: رفاق السفر الذين سجلوا مرورهم بالتعليقات المخربشة ، اسم ما على الصفحة البيضاء الفارغة في بداية ونهاية الكتاب ، بطاقة قطار لتأشير صفحة معينة. سواء كانت قديمة أو جديدة ، الإشارة الوحيدة التي أناضل لإزالتها من كتبي (وغالبا دون نجاح يذكر) هي لصقة السعر التي يضعها بائعو الكتب الحقودين على ظهر الكتاب. هذه الدملة الشيطانية الصغيرة التي لا تستأصل بسهولة ، فهي تخلف ندوبا مجذومة وآثارا من مادة لزجة يلتصق بها الغبار والزغب بعد فترة من الزمن ، تجعلني أتمنى لو كان لدي ممسحة جهنمية أحكم بها على هؤلاء الذين اخترعوا هذه اللصقات.

The man stopped talking and was looking at the sunset. But what does someone who hates and loves want with a sunset?

Every true writer is like a bird; he repeats the same song, the same theme, all his life. For me, this theme as always been revolt.

القارئ المثالي يخلخل النص، ولا يسلّم بكلمات الكاتب. القارئ المثالي هو قارئ تراكمي: كل قراءة لكتاب من الكتب تضفي على السرد طبقة جديدة من الذاكرة

An uncertain evil causes anxiety because, at the bottom of one's heart, one goes on hoping till the last moment that it may not be true; a certain evil, on the other hand, instills, for a time, a kind of dreary tranquillity.

And I find a happiness in the fact of accepting — In the sublimely scientific and difficult fact of accepting the inevitable natural.

(”اذهب إلى الخارج وعش حياتك”،كانت أمي تقولها دائمًا عندما كانت تراني أقراء،كما لها أنّ أنشغالي الصامت هذا كان يتعارض مع تصوراتها عن الحياة)

There is a line of poetry, a sentence in a fable, a word in an essay, by which my existence is justified; find that line, and immortality is assured.

I’m in no hurry: the sun and the moon aren’t, either. Nobody goes faster than the legs they have. If where I want to go is far away, I’m not there in an instant. (6/20/1919)

It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at least as a ghostly presence) to a louder, clearer, more durable library of the banned, looted, plundered, shredded or curtailed.

We are losing our common vocabulary, built over thousands of years to help and delight and instruct us, for the sake of what we take to be the new technology's virtues.

Loyalty, Signor Molteni, not love. Penelope is loyal to Ulysses but we do not know how far she loved him...and as you know people can sometimes be absolutely loyal without loving. In certain cases, in fact, loyalty is form of vengeance, of black-mail, of recovering one's self-respect. Loyalty, not love.

Even so, I’m somebody. I’m the Discoverer of Nature. I’m the Argonaut of true sensations. I bring a new Universe to the Universe Because I bring the Universe to itself.

...There was nothing one could do when love came. It was fast, and it was strong, and if it were not good, then surely God would not have allowed it such power.

Evil requires no reason.

The starting point is a question.

Our books will bear witness for or against us, our books reflect who we are and who we have been, our books hold the share of pages granted to us from the Book of Life. By the books we call ours we will be judged

الكتب الموجودة على رفوفي لاتعرفني إلى أن أفتحها

In the dark, with the windows lit and the rows of books glittering, the library is a closed space, a universe of self-serving rules that pretend to replace or translate those of the shapeless universe beyond.

I soon discovered that one doesn't simply read Crime and Punishment or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. One reads a certain edition, a specific copy, recognizable by the roughness or the smoothness of its paper, by its scent, by a slight tear on page 72 and a coffee ring on the right-hand corner of the back cover.

No somos conscientes de lo delicada que es nuestra salud mental y seguimos riéndonos de los demás, criticando sus personalidades o sus características físicas, sin saber de qué forma eso los golpeará, sin tomar en cuenta lo que puede pasar por la cabeza de esas personas. Tenemos que aprender a sacar todas las palabras de amor que tengamos, debemos saber cómo manejar lo negativo para no afectar a otros.

Death is alive, they whispered. Death lives inside life, as bones dance within the body. Yesterday is within today. Yesterday never dies.

Pouco me importa. Pouco me importa o quê? Não sei: pouco me importa.

I’m glad I see with my eyes and not the pages I’ve read.

They spoke to me of people, and of humanity. But I've never seen people, or humanity. I've seen various people, astonishingly dissimilar, Each separated from the next by an unpeopled space.

Podem rezar latim sobre o meu caixão, se quiserem. Se quiserem, podem dançar e cantar à roda dele. Não tenho preferências para quando já não puder ter preferências. O que for, quando for, é que será o que é.

To love is to think. And I almost forget to feel only from thinking about her. I don’t know what I want at all, even from her, and I don’t think about anything but her. I have a great animated distraction. When I want to meet her, I almost feel like not meeting her, So I don’t have to leave her afterwards. And I prefer thinking about her, because it’s like I’m afraid of her. I don’t know what I want at all, and I don’t want to know what I want. All I want to do is think about her. I’m asking nothing of nobody, not even her, except to think.

- Te quiero... y te querré por siempre. - Hasta que la última estrella estalle. Ella siguió mirando las estrellas con ojos soñadores, podía verla flotar en el espacio con los brazos abiertos, dando vueltas lentamente. Yo vigilaba las estrellas, tratando de asegurarme que ninguna de ellas se apagara.

Reading in bed is a self-centered act, immobile, free from ordinary social conventions, invisible to the world, and one that, because it takes place between the sheets, in the realm of lust and sinful idleness, has something of the thrill of things forbidden.

Libraries, whether my own or shared with a greater reading public, have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I've been seduced by their labyrinthine logic, which suggests that reason (if not art) rules over a cacophonous arrangement of books.

...my boredom might be described as a malady affecting external objects and consisting of a withering process; an almost instantaneous loss of vitality--just as though one saw a flower change in a few seconds from a bud to decay and dust.

Ouço-te ciciar amo-te pela primeira vez, e na ténue luminosidade que se recolhe ao horizonte acaba o corpo. Recolho o mel, guardo a alegria, e digo-te baixinho: Apaga as estrelas, vem dormir comigo no esplendor da noite do mundo que nos foge.

If I knew I was going to die tomorrow, And Spring came the day after tomorrow, I would die peacefully, because it came the day after tomorrow. If that’s its time, when else should it come? I like it that everything is real and everything is right; And I like that it would be like this even if I didn’t like it. And so, if I die now, I die peacefully Because everything is real and everything is right.

كنتُ أسمعها في رأسي الأسطر السوداء والفراغات البيضاءالموجودة بين الأسطر تحولت فجأة إلى معانٍ ذات إيقاع وفي حوار صامت مملوء بالإحترام تعرفنا بعضنا إلى بعض ... وما إن تمكنتُ من ربط العلامات السوداء النحيلة بعضها مع بعض وتحويلها إلى حقائق حية حتى أصبحت إنساناً جبّاراً كنتُ أستطيع أن أقرأ

The stories that unfold in the space of a writer's study, the objects chosen to watch over a desk, the books selected to sit on the shelves, all weave a web of echoes and reflections of meanings and affections, that lend a visitor the illusion that something of the owner of this space lives on between these walls, even if the owner is no more.

عند القراءة نحن سذّج . نحن نقرأ بحركات بطيئة وطويلة كما لو كنّا نسبح في الفضاء . نحن ممتلئون أحكاماً مسبقة وأحقاداً . أو أننا كرماء , نغفر للنص عيوبه ونتغافل عن ضعفه و نصحح أخطاءه . في بعض الأحيان , عندما تكون السماء صحوة صافية , نقرأ بأنفاس محبوسة , بارتجاف , كما لو أنّ أحدهم قد (( سار على قبرنا )) , كما لو أنّ ذكرى قديمة منسية عُثر عليها فجأة في داخلنا - التعرف على شيء ما سبق أن عرفنا أنه كان موجوداً , أو على شيء لم نشعر به إلا كوميض أو ظل , الذي ينطلق منا ويعود إلى داخلنا قبل أن نعرف ماذا حدث - بعدئذ نكون قد تقدمنا في السن وأصبحنا أكثر حكمة

The conflict between corporations and activists is that of narcolepsy versus remembrance. The corporations have money, power, and influence. Our sole weapon is public outrage. Outrage blocked the Yuccan Dam, ousted Nixon, and in part, terminated the monstrosities in Vietnam. But outrage is unwieldy to manufacture and handle. First, you need scrutiny; second, widespread awareness; only when this reaches a critical mass does public outrage explode into being. Any stage may be sabotaged. The world’s Alberto Grimaldis can fight scrutiny by burying truth in committees, dullness, and misinformation, or by intimidating the scrutinizers. They can extinguish awareness by dumbing down education, owning TV stations, paying ‘guest fees’ to leader writers, or just buying the media up. The media—and not just The Washington Post—is where democracies conduct their civil wars.

If I could take a bite of the whole world And feel it on my palate I’d be more happy for a minute or so... But I don’t always want to be happy. Sometimes you have to be Unhappy to be natural... Not every day is sunny. When there’s been no rain for a while, you pray for it to come. So I take unhappiness with happiness Naturally, like someone who doesn’t find it strange That there are mountains and plains And that there are cliffs and grass... What you need is to be natural and calm In happiness and in unhappiness, To feel like someone seeing, To think like someone walking, And when it’s time to die, remember the day dies, And the sunset is beautiful, and the endless night is beautiful... That’s how it is and that’s how it should be...

When the first chakra is disconnected from the feminine Earth, we can feel orphaned and motherless. The masculine principle predominates, and we look for security from material things.  Individuality prevails over relationship, and selfish drives triumph over family, social and global responsibility. The more separated we become from the Earth, the more hostile we become to the feminine.  We disown our passion, our creativity, and our sexuality. Eventually the Earth itself becomes a baneful place. I remember being told by a medicine woman in the Amazon, "Do you know why they are really cutting down the rain forest? Because it is wet and dark and tangled and feminine.

نحن نعرف أننا نقرأ حتى عندما نتخلى عن عدم تصديقنا , وعندما نفقد القربى من النص ; نحن نعرف لماذا نقرأ حتى عندما لا نعرف كيف نقرأ ; في الوقت نفسه نحتفظ في عقولنا بالعالم الظاهري للنص ونتمسك بفعل القراءة . إننا نقرأ لأننا نريد العثور على النهاية . فقط لأننا نريد مواصلة القراءة . نحن نقرأ كالكشافة الذين يتقفون الخطى ناسين كل ما حولهم من أشياء . نقرأ شاردي الذهن متجاوزين بعض الصفحات . نقرأ باحتقار , بإعجاب , بملل , بانزعاج , بحماسة , بحسد وشوق . في بعض الأحيان تعترينا فرحة غامرة مفاجئة دون أن نستطيع القول ما هو السبب . (( بحق السماء ما هي هذة العاطفة ؟ )) سألت ربيكا وست بعد الإنتهاء من قراءة الملك لير . (( ماذا تتميز به أعمال الفن العظيمة التي تمارس عليّ هذا التأثير الباعث على السعادة ؟ )) إننا لا نعرف ذلك ; عند القراءة نحن سُذج . نحن نقرأ بحركات بطيئة وطويلة كما لو كنّا نسبح في الفضاء . نحن ممتلئون أحكاماً مسبقة وأحقاداً . أو أننا كرماء , نغفر للنص عيوبه ونتغافل عن ضعفه و نصحح أخطاءه . في بعض الأحيان , عندما تكون السماء صحوة صافية , نقرأ بأنفاس محبوسة , بارتجاف , كما لو أنّ أحدهم قد (( سار على قبرنا )) , كما لو أنّ ذكرى قديمة منسية عُثر عليها فجأة في داخلنا - التعرف على شيء ما سبق أن عرفنا أنه كان موجوداً , أو على شيء لم نشعر به إلا كوميض أو ظل , الذي ينطلق منا ويعود إلى داخلنا قبل أن نعرف ماذا حدث - بعدئذ نكون قد تقدمنا في السن وأصبحنا أكثر حكمة .