Chilean Love Quotes

Psycholinguists argue about whether language reflects our perception of reality or helps create them. I am in the latter camp. Take the names we give the animals we eat. The Patagonian toothfish is a prehistoric-looking creature with teeth like needles and bulging yellowish eyes that lives in deep waters off the coast of South America. It did not catch on with sophisticated foodies until an enterprising Los Angeles importer renamed it the considerably more palatable "Chilean sea bass.

I fell in love with my country because of the stories my grandfather told me and because of our travels together through the south. He taught me history and geography, showed me maps, made me read Chilean writers, corrected my grammar and handwriting. As a teacher, he was short on patience but long on severity; my errors made him red with anger, but if he was content with my work he would reward me with a wedge of Camembert cheese,

More than even loving your family, there is no more important ambition than finding a job that you love. If you don’t, you’ll reek of self-loathing like a porn star who can’t get the box cover, and your family will hate you for it. Loving your work doesn’t mean finding a job you can tolerate for eight hours a day, but rather a job that gets you flying out of bed in the morning like a Jack Russell who just had a firecracker stuffed up his ass. Was I ever addicted to my job? Damn right I was. You’re fucked if you aren’t. You better scratch and claw like a Chilean miner to find a gig worthy of gettin’ hooked on. Unlike your hobbies or your spouse, you gotta do your job every day regardless of whether or not it gets you revved up.

It was the time of apprehensive mothers, of taciturn fathers, and of burly older brothers, but it was also the time of blankets, of quilts, and of ponchos, and so no one thought it strange that Carla and Gonzalo would spend two or three hours every evening curled up on the sofa beneath a magnificent red pancho made of Chiloe wool that, in the freezing winter of 1991, seemed like a basic necessity. The world is falling to pieces and everything almost always goes to shit and we almost always hurt the people we love or they hurt us irreparably and there doesn’t seem to be a reason to harbor any kind of hope, but at least this story ends well, ends here, with the scene of these two Chilean poets who look each other in the eye and burst out laughing and don’t want to leave the bar for anything, so they order another round of beers.

Before he loved you, I suffered alongside him … I was his son before he even met you … Don’t we need to be taken care of, too? “With all that money, the chicken coop [of relatives] gets all mixed up and the family gets warped,” Jessica says.

As she writes, she feels a warm assurance; she likes her phrasing, and her conclusions, which are not absolute. On the contrary, they retain an ambiguous hesitant air, a little like done thinking out loud. She rereads her first notes and at times disagrees with herself, and she loves that, she has always liked changing her mind. She thinks about Chaura Paillacar struggling with headaches and about the unnamed poet's jumpy eyes, and Aurelia Bala writing with both hands and Floridor Pérez with his son Chile, whom she imagines as a teenager every bit as skinny and gangly as the country that gave him the name he wanted to change at any cost. She thinks about Hernaldo Bravo just after he was hit by a car, in a hospital, writing poems out of pure boredom, and about the twins scribbling incessantly on the walls of Bernadita Socorro's small, light-filled apartment... that the world of Chilean poets is a little stupid but it is more genuine, less false than the ordinary lives of people who follow the rules and keep their heads down. Of course there is opportunism and cruelty, but also real passion and heroism and allegiance to dreams. She thinks that Chilean poets are stray dogs and stray dogs are Chilean poets and that she herself is a Chilean poet, poking her snout into the trash cans of an unknown city...

You will never overhear the following conversation in a fine-dining establishment. WAITER: Today’s specials. We have Chilean sea bass, which is sautéed in a lemon beurre blanc, and we have a Hot Pocket that is cooked in a dirty microwave. And that comes with a side of Pepto. PATRON: Is your Hot Pocket cold in the middle? WAITER: It’s frozen. But it can be served boiling-lava hot. PATRON: Will it burn my mouth? WAITER: It will destroy your mouth. Everything will taste like rubber for a month. PATRON: Oh, I’ll get the Hot Pocket.

As she writes, she feels a warm assurance; she likes her phrasing, and her conclusions, which are not absolute. On the contrary, they retain an ambiguous, hesitant air, a little like someone thinking out loud. She rereads her first notes and at times disagrees with herself, and she loves that, she has always liked changing her mind. She thinks about Chaura Paillacar struggling with headaches and about the unnamed poet's jumpy eyes, and Aurelia Bala writing with both hands and Floridor Pérez with his son Chile, whom she imagines as a teenager every bit as skinny and gangly as the country that gave him the name he wanted to change at any cost. She thinks about Hernaldo Bravo just after he was hit by a car, in a hospital, writing poems out of pure boredom, and about the twins scribbling incessantly on the walls of Bernadita Socorro's small, light-filled apartment... that the world of Chilean poets is a little stupid but it is more genuine, less false than the ordinary lives of people who follow the rules and keep their heads down. Of course there is opportunism and cruelty, but also real passion and heroism and allegiance to dreams. She thinks that Chilean poets are stray dogs and stray dogs are Chilean poets and that she herself is a Chilean poet, poking her snout into the trash cans of an unknown city...

On growing up internationally - from the Daughter of Copper. And so, with the greatest of ease, both as children and adults, we float back and forth between our two languages and cultures, seamlessly navigating the moments of time and place that define us.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. Pablo Neruda, Sonnet XVII

We didn’t have to insist too much. No amount of exhaustion could have prevented him from sharing his passion on the subject. He loved sharing his memories with us. “Do you know where the easiest place to find a meteorite is?” he asked, turning his head to look towards the backseat. “In a meteorite museum?” Oscar replied with his usual wit. My brother’s words amused the professor, who burst out laughing. “Okay! That’s the best place. Then what would be the second-best place?” The professor insisted. We shrugged, waiting for the answer. “The best place to find meteorites is a desert. Especially, a flat desert with light-colored sand, because it is much easier to spot them. The dryness of the atmosphere keeps them well preserved,” he explained. “But a desert is enormous. You could walk for months without running into anything,” I said. “How can you find a stone in such a huge area?” “Well, sometimes it’s a matter of luck, but if the meteorite is large enough, NASA reports the estimated landing coordinates, so you can go directly to the area you’re interested in,” Sergy replied. “A couple of years ago I spent a month in the Atacama Desert in Chile, with a Chilean friend who has a meteorite museum in San Pedro de Atacama. We found five new specimens. One of them weighed over four pounds.” “A four-pound meteorite is quite the trophy, boys,” our father pointed out. “When you walk towards it, pick it up and hold it in your hand, the sensation is indescribable,” Sergy said, remembering his trip. “If you close your eyes, you can feel the primitive energy beating inside it.” We all listened, mesmerized by his stories and imagining his adventures. Even Flash sat still on Oscar’s lap, paying full attention to the professor who went on talking from the passenger’s seat. Suddenly, Oscar’s voice interrupted my fantasies, “When I grow up, I’m also going to be a meteorite hunter.” I turned to look at him. But he wasn’t looking at me. He wasn’t even looking at the professor or at Dad. He was looking out the window, deep in thought, looking as if he hadn’t said a word. Flash, who had settled between the two of us, looked at him as if she’d