Isabel Quotes

The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night.

Write what should not be forgotten.

The longer I live, the more uninformed I feel. Only the young have an explanation for everything.

You want to talk? Fine. Talk. Tell me something you've never told anybody else.' I thought for a moment. 'Turtles have the second-largest brains of any animal on the planet.' It took Isabel only a second to process this. 'No, they don't.' 'I know that's why I've never told anybody that before.

Accept the children the way we accept trees—with gratitude, because they are a blessing—but do not have expectations or desires. You don’t expect trees to change, you love them as they are.

There is no death, daughter. People die only when we forget them,' my mother explained shortly before she left me. 'If you can remember me, I will be with you always.

For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.

We only have what we give.

I always want to know the things one shouldn't do." "So as to do them?" asked her aunt. "So as to choose," said Isabel

The reason I want you to put a shirt on is, well, because, um..." "You've never seen a guy with his shirt off?" "Ha, ha. Very funny. Believe me, you don't have anything I haven't seen before." "Wanna bet?" he says, then moves his hands to the button on his jeans and pops it open. Isabel walks in at that exact moment. "Whoa, Alex. Please keep your pants on.

You can't find someone who doesn't want to be found.

Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me.

A man does what he can; a woman does what a man cannot.

Sometimes life turns out hard, Isabel. Sometimes it just bites right through you. And sometimes, just when you think it's done its worst, it comes back and takes another chunk.

Life's pain. You just have to get over as much of it as you can. -Isabel Culpeper

This is to assuage our conscience, darling" she would explain to Blanca. "But it doesn't help the poor. They don't need charity; they need justice.

Words are not that important when you recognize intentions.

Why don’t you just pretend that the asshole dropped dead? You can’t call or write to a dead man. Put a couple of candles in front of his picture, say a few Hail Marys, and get it over with.

you can tell the deepest truths with the lies of fiction

You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend, or not.

She was made for untidy rooms and rumpled beds.

Perhaps we are in this world to search for love, find it and lose it, again and again. With each love, we are born anew, and with each love that ends we collect a new wound. I am covered with proud scars.

Afterward, Isabel drove me home and I shut myself in the study with Rilke, and I read and I wanted. And leaving you (there arent words to untangle it) Your life, fearful and immense and blossoming, So that, sometimes frustrated, and sometimes understanding Your life is sometimes a stone in you, and then, a star I was beginning to undertand poetry.

Writing is a process, a journey into memory and the soul.

From Chapter 1: Isabel went into the kitchen. Their butterball of a beagle wagged his tail and peered up at her with his soulful brown eyes. He was eager to get his reward for looking cute as a button, and he knew she was a pushover.

I couldn't imagine anyone ever reading a book enough to make it look like that. It looked like it had been driven over by a school bus after someone had taken a bath with it.

Oh my God. What in—” I was going to be killed by two generations of beautiful women. While naked. “Mom,” Isabel snapped, interrupting. “Do you mind not staring? It’s totally perv.

He had only to touch me to turn my tears into sighs and my anger to desire. How accomodating love is; it forgives everything.

Erotica is using a feather; pornograpy is using the whole chicken.

We all have an unsuspected reserve of strength inside that emerges when life puts us to the test.

The source of my difficulties has always been the same: an inability to accept what to others seems natural, and an irresistible tendency to voice opinions no one wants to hear . . .

Silence before being born, silence after death: life is nothing but noise between two unfathomable silences.

Writing is like making love. Don't worry about the orgasm, just concentrate on the process.

If I write something, I fear it will happen, and if I love too much, I fear I will lose that person; nevertheless, I cannot stop writing or loving...

He'd only been gone two seconds, but the room got brighter when they were together, as if they were two elements that became brilliant in proximity. At Sam's clumsy efforts to carry the vacuum, Grace smiled a new smile that I thought only he ever got, and he shot her a withering look full of the sort of subtext you could only get from a lot of conversations whispered after dark. It made me think of Isabel, back at her house. We didn't have what Sam and Grace had. We weren't even close to having it. I didn't think what we had could get to this, even if you gave it a thousand years.

I believe in love. I believe in hard times and love winning. I believe marriage is hard. I believe people make mistakes. I believe people can want two things at once. I believe people are selfish and generous at the same time. I believe very few people want to hurt others. I believe that you can be surprised by life. I believe in happy endings.

I was a romantic and sentimental creature, with a tendency towards solitude.

When love exists, nothing else matters, not life’s predicaments, not the fury of the years, not a physical winding down or scarcity of opportunity.

El pasado y el futuro eran parte de la misma cosa y la realidad del presente era un caleidoscopio de espejos desordenados, donde todo podía ocurrir.

Do not act meanly, do not be unkind, because the time for setting things right may pass before your heart changes course. Isabel Dalhousie

Isabel and Alma Trumbo are the sisters who reside in the brick rambler on Church Street. They are a bit, uh, different and unorthodox. Borderline eccentric, some of the townies say, especially Alma.” “What do the borderline eccentric sisters Isabel and Alma know about solving a murder case?” Dwight gave it a moment’s reflection. “They could probably write a book about it.

Memory is fiction. We select the brightest and the darkest, ignoring what we are ashamed of, and so embroider the broad tapestry of our lives.

...when everything else fails, we communicate in the language of the stars

Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born: just a change

So the real question would be,' he said finally, 'if people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness?' - Taylor Branch, as quoted by Isabel Wilkerson in Caste

Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born: just a change.

And I am not one of those women who trips twice over the same stone.

Barrabas came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy.

The price of privilege is the moral duty to act when one sees another person treated unfairly. And the least that a person in the dominant caste can do is not make the pain any worse.

La verdadera amistad resiste el tiempo, la distancia y el silencio.

They did what human beings looking for freedom, throughout history, have often done. They left.

Why did you even come here, Cole?” I touched her chin. This place, this beautiful place, this girl, this beautiful girl, this music, this life. “I came here for you.

She sowed in my mind the idea that reality is not only what we see on the surface; it has a magical dimension as well and, if we so desire, it is legitimate to enhance it and color it to make our journey through life less trying.

Quote is taken from Chapter 1: A decade ago when Isabel’s husband Max had died, they’d moved in together and merged their possessions. Neither sister brought any fussy teapots, canaries, sachets, or doilies, but lots of other stuff had to either stay or go. Looking at the lime green armchair gave Alma the willies. Her suggestion to slipcover it in a more subdued color had garnered Isabel’s frosty stare, and Alma had dropped the matter.

We are responsible for our own ignorance or, with time and openhearted enlightenment, our own wisdom.

She had made the kitchen a lovely place. Isabel could cry at it: at how a room could be made, and left behind, and turn terrible by way of absence. How a space could miss a person.

If people really grew up, there would be no crime, no divorce, no Civil War reenactors....it's not like you think it will be, that one day you'll wake up and realize that you've got things figured out. You never figure it out. Ever." - Isabel Spellman attempting to explain growing up to her sister Rae

Wait —” Sam said. “Have you seen Isabel yet?” My fingers still felt the shape of her. “Da. We embraced. Angels sang, Sam. Those fat ones. Cherubs. Cherubim. I must go.” “Don’t bite people.

As Isabel acted out her date, both of them laughing, I stayed in the kitchen, out of sight, and pretended she was telling me, too. And that, for once, I was part of this hidden language of laughter and silliness and girls that was, somehow, friendship.

Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred, it is not necessarily personal. It is the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place for so long that it looks like the natural order of things.

The needle rocked awkwardly and at the end of her beginning rows, Isabel held up her work to show Esperanza. "Mine is all crooked!" Esperanza smiled and reached over and gently pulled the yarn, unraveling the uneven stitches. Then she looked into Isabel's trusting eyes and said, "Do not ever be afraid to start over.

If you can’t believe in miracles, then believe in yourself. When you want something bad enough, let that drive push you to make it happen. Sometimes you’ll run into brick walls that are put there to test you. Find a way around them and stay focused on your dream. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

He realized...that the loudest are the least sincere, that arrogance is a quality of the ignorant, and that flatterers tend to be vicious.

You only have one life, but if you live it well, that’s enough. The only reality is now, today. What are you waiting for to be happy?

At the most difficult moments of my life, when it seemed that every door was closed to me, the taste of those apricots comes back to comfort me with the notion that abundance is always within reach, if only one knows how to find it.

Esa noche creí que había perdido para siempre la capacidad de enamorarme, que nunca más podría reírme ni perseguir una ilusión. Pero nunca más es mucho tiempo.

I seek truth and beauty in the transparency of an autumn leaf, in the perfect form of a seashell on the beach, in the curve of a woman's back, in the texture of an ancient tree trunk, but also in the elusive forms of reality.

I eventually came to understand that in harboring the anger, the bitterness and resentment towards those that had hurt me, I was giving the reins of control over to them. Forgiving was not about accepting their words and deeds. Forgiving was about letting go and moving on with my life. In doing so, I had finally set myself free.

A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.

You happened to me,You scare me to death, you know. When you stormed into my life, you turned everything inside out. You upset all the things I believed about myself and made me think in new ways. I know who I used to be, but I’m finally ready to figure out who I am. Cynicism gets tiring, Isabel, and you’ve . . . rested me.And don’t you dare tell me you’ve stopped loving me back, because you’re still a better person than I am, and I’m counting on you to take more care with my heart than I took with yours.

Food," I suggested. "Sleep. That's what I need. To get the hell away from here." Cole frowned at me, as if I'd suggested "ducks" and "yoga".

My son, the Holy Church is on the right, but Jesus Christ was always on the left.

لا شيء مجاني في هذا العالم، فمقابل هذه التفاهات ستدفع ثمنًا غاليًا جدًا.

I said just let me try one more time and she said, "THAT'S ENOUGH, ISABEL," again, and she could just say it over and over and it would never get through my thick skull because I'm always wanting and wanting because nothing is ever enough you are never enough I am never enough I am never enough I AM NEVER ENOUGH.

...a fixation is very stubborn: it burrows into the brain and breaks the heart. There are many fixations, but love is the worst.

At times I feel as if I had lived all this before and that I have already written these very words, but I know it was not I: it was another woman, who kept her notebooks so that one day I could use them. I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously. ... That's why my Grandmother Clara wrote in her notebooks, in order to see things in their true dimension and to defy her own poor memory.

Pain is unavoidable, but suffering is optional.

She did not believe that the world was a vale of tears but rather a joke that God had played and that it was idiotic to take it seriously.

I came back because I had to. Because there was nothing wrong in the world except that I was getting older in it. Because Sam and Grace had told me I should go if that was what I wanted. What I wanted was: I wanted. Isabel —

My good mood felt like an endangered species.

A caste system is an artificial construction, a fixed and embedded ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups.

In our era, it is not enough to be tolerant. You tolerate mosquitoes in the summer, a rattle in an engine, the gray slush that collects at the crosswalk in winter. You tolerate what you would rather not have to deal with and wish would go away. It is no honor to be tolerated. Every spiritual tradition says love your neighbor as yourself, not tolerate them.

Lines don’t make beautiful women less beautiful

Do you truly believe that life is fair, Senor de la Vega? -No, maestro, but I plan to do everything in my power to make it so.

Happiness is not exuberant or noisy, like pleasure or joy; it’s silent, tranquil, and gentle; it’s a feeling of satisfaction inside that begins with self-love.

If your ceiling should fall down, then you have lost a room, but gained a courtyard. Think of it that way.

But don't we often lie to people we love, or not tell them things, precisely because we love them?

No se puede encontrar a quien no quiere ser encontrado

La gente no lee lo que no le interesa y si le interesa es que ya tiene madurez para hacerlo

The slave who dances is free ... while he is dancing.

Voicemail #1: “Hi, Isabel Culpeper. I am lying in my bed, looking at the ceiling. I am mostly naked. I am thinking of … your mother. Call me.” Voicemail #2: The first minute and thirty seconds of “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You” by the Bee Gees. Voicemail #3: “I’m bored. I need to be entertained. Sam is moping. I may kill him with his own guitar. It would give me something to do and also make him say something. Two birds with one stone! I find all these old expressions unnecessarily violent. Like, ring around the rosy. That’s about the plague, did you know? Of course you did. The plague is, like, your older cousin. Hey, does Sam talk to you? He says jack shit to me. God, I’m bored. Call me.” Voicemail #4: “Hotel California” by the Eagles, in its entirety, with every instance of the word California replaced with Minnesota. Voicemail #5: “Hi, this is Cole St. Clair. Want to know two true things? One, you’re never picking up this phone. Two, I’m never going to stop leaving long messages. It’s like therapy. Gotta talk to someone. Hey, you know what I figured out today? Victor’s dead. I figured it out yesterday, too. Every day I figure it out again. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I feel like there’s no one I can —” Voicemail #6: “So, yeah, I’m sorry. That last message went a little pear-shaped. You like that expression? Sam said it the other day. Hey, try this theory on for size: I think he’s a dead British housewife reincarnated into a Beatle’s body. You know, I used to know this band that put on fake British accents for their shows. Boy, did they suck, aside from being assholes. I can’t remember their name now. I’m either getting senile or I’ve done enough to my brain that stuff’s falling out. Not so fair of me to make this one-sided, is it? I’m always talking about myself in these things. So, how are you, Isabel Rosemary Culpeper? Smile lately? Hot Toddies. That was the name of the band. The Hot Toddies.” Voicemail #20: “I wish you’d answer.

my sweet old etcetera aunt lucy during the recent war could and what is more did tell you just what everybody was fighting for, my sister isabel created hundreds (and hundreds) of socks not to mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers etcetera wristers etcetera, my mother hoped that i would die etcetera bravely of course my father used to become hoarse talking about how it was a privilege and if only he could meanwhile my self etcetera lay quietly in the deep mud et cetera (dreaming, et cetera, of Your smile eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

She was one of those people who was born for the greatness of a single love, for exaggerated hatred, for apocalyptic vengance, and for the most sublime forms of heroism but she was unable to shape her fate to the dimensions of her amorous vocation, so it was lived out as something flat and gray trapped between her mother's sickroom walls, wretched tenements, and the tortured confessions with which this large, opulent, hot-blooded woman made for maternity, abundance, action, and ardor- was consuming herself.

I've no idea when I'm going to wear it, the girl replied calmly. I only knew that I had to have it. Once I tried it on, well... She shrugged. The dress claimed me.

A Mexican guy named Sam pushes Gary Frankel next to Isabel. "This guy can break your arm with one snap, asshole. Get out of my sight before I sic him on you," Sam says. Gary, who's wearing a coral shirt and white pants, growls to look tough. It doesn't work.

A veces, para exorcizar los demonios de un recuerdo es necesario contarlo como un cuento

It occurred to me that no matter where I lived, geography could not save me.

صمت قبل الولادة، وصمت بعد الموت، والحياة هي مجرد صخب بين صمتين لا قرار لهما.

التصوير والكتابة هما محاولة للإمساك باللحظات قبل أن تتلاشى .

Nice people with common sense do not make interesting characters. They only make good former spouses.

Be careful what you ask of Heaven; it might be granted.

There are a lot of good people, Irina, but they keep quiet about it. It’s the bad ones who make a lot of noise, and that’s why they get noticed.

our demons lose their power when we pull them out of the depths where they hide and look them in the face in broad daylight.

I leaned across the table towards the crumb-thrower. "Do that again," I said, loud enough to be heard over the opera singer, Dolly, my mother, and the smell of the breadsticks, "and I will sell your firstborn child to the devil.

Beneath me, the bed tipped as Cole edged closer. I felt him lean over me. His breath, warm and measured, hit my cheek. Two breaths. Three. Four. I didn't know what I wanted. Then I heard him stop breathing, and a second later, I felt his lips on my mouth. It wasn't the sort of kiss I'd had with anyone before. This kiss was so soft it was like a memory of a kiss, so careful on my lips that it was like someone running his fingers along them. My mouth parted and stilled; it was so quiet, a whisper, not a shout. Cole's hand touched my neck, thumb pressed into the skin next to my jaw. It wasn't a touch that said I need more. It was a touch that said I want this. It was all completely soundless. I didn't think either of us was breathing. Cole sat back up, slowly, and I opened my eyes. His expression, as ever, was blank, the face he wore when something mattered. He said, "That's how I would kiss you, if I loved you.

You are my angel and my damnation; in your presence I reach divine ecstasy and in your absence I descent to hell.

Todos nacemos felices. Por el camino se nos ensucia la vida, pero podemos limpiarla. La felicidad no es exuberante ni bulliciosa, como el placer o la alegría. Es silenciosa, tranquila, suave, es un estado interno de satisfacción que empieza por amarse a sí mismo.

Slavery was not merely an unfortunate thing that happened to black people. It was an American innovation, an American institution created by and for the benefit of the elites of the dominant caste and enforced by poorer members of the dominant caste who tied their lot to the caste system rather than to their consciences.

Happiness is pure kitsch; we come into the world to suffer and learn.

Mi Popo decía que el amor nos vuelve buenos. No importa a quién amemos, tampoco importa ser correspondidos o si la relación es duradera. Basta la experiencia de amar, eso nos transforma.

Choose not to look, however, at your own peril. The owner of an old house knows that whatever you are ignoring will never go away. Whatever is lurking will fester whether you choose to look or not. Ignorance is no protection from the consequences of inaction. Whatever you are wishing away will gnaw at you until you gather the courage to face what you would rather not see.

The names of persons and living creatures demand respect, because when we speak to them we touch their heart and become a part of thier life force.

Land is something one should never sell. It is the only thing left when all else is gone.

...memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously.

Each of us chooses the tone for telling his or her own story. I would like to choose the durable clarity of a platinum print, but nothing in my destiny possesses the luminosity. I live among diffuse shadings, veiled mysteries, uncertainties; the tone of telling my life is closer to that of a portrait in sepia.

My worst flaw is that I tell secrets, my own and everybody else's.

Remember that all the others are more afraid than you

His calls for justice were lost at the mercy of the wind and human indifference.

من يعرف أكثر، عليه واجبات أكثر تجاه الإنسانية.

Let's sing our way out of this

It’s easy to judge others when we are not going through the same thing.

¿Qué nos pasó? Tal vez estamos en el mundo para buscar el amor, encontrarlo y perderlo, una y otra vez. Con cada amor volvemos a nacer, y con cada amor que termina se nos abre una herida... Estoy llena de cicatrices.

Reading is like looking through several windows which open to an infinite landscape....For me life without reading would be like being in prison, it would be as if my spirit were in a straightjacket; life would be a very dark and narrow place.

Taking risks is not being suicidal. Otherwise, skydivers need serious help.

She felt that everything was made of glass, as fragile as a sigh

Nothing can grow in the shade of secrets, she would say, love needs light and space to flourish.

There is room in the human heart for all the divinities.

The point was not to die, since death came anyway, but to survive, which would be a miracle.

يبدو أننا جميعاً جئنا نبحث عن شيء و وجدنا شيئاً آخر ..

Cole," I said, "Don't lose this number.

Do you have it on your person?" my father asked. "Jesus" I replied. "My person has it in her purse.

-Váyase al carajo -Bueno, para allá vamos. Usted viene conmigo

​Courage is a virtue appreciated in a male but considered a defect in our gender. Bold women are a threat to a world that is badly out of balance, in favor of men.

Music is a wind that blows away the years, memories, and fear, that crouching animal I carry inside me.

Before you conquer the mountain, you must learn to overcome your fear.

To dehumanize another human being is not merely to declare that someone is not human, and it does not happen by accident. It is a process, a programming. It takes energy and reinforcement to deny what is self-evident in another member of one's own species.

Why can’t I do it?” [Isabel] asked…. “Do what?” “Just forget about everything. Just go somewhere and get smashed and pretend like there are no problems or consequences. I know why. Because there are still problems and consequences. And going and--and--partying doesn’t make them go away. I feel like I’m the only sane person in the world. I don’t get why this whole world runs on stupidity.

My name is Eva, which means 'life,' according to a book of names my mother consulted. I was born in the back room of a shadowy house, and grew up amidst ancient furniture, books in Latin, and human mummies, but none of those things made me melancholy, because I came into the world with a breath of the jungle in my memory.

We have to defend democracy, but remember that not everything is politics. Without science, industry, and technology, no progress is possible, and without music and art, there's no soul.

من لم يعان الجوع ليس له الحق في إطلاق الأحكام

Es fácil juzgar a otros cuando uno no ha sufrido esa experiencia

Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends.

Radical empathy, on the other hand, means putting in the work to educate oneself and to listen with a humble heart to understand another's experience from their perspective, not as we imagine we would feel. Radical empathy is not about you and what you think you would do in a situation you have never been in and perhaps never will. It is the kindred connection from a place of deep knowing that opens your spirit to the pain of another as they perceive it. Empathy is no substitute for the experience itself. We don't get to tell a person with a broken leg or a bullet wound that they are not in pain. And people who have hit the caste lottery are not in a position to tell a person who has suffered under the tyranny of caste what is offensive or hurtful or demeaning to those at the bottom. The price of privilege is the moral duty to act when one sees another person treated unfairly. And the least that a person in the dominant caste can do is not make the pain any worse.

[INTJs and INFJs] Are willing to concede that the impossible takes a little longer—but not much

Here’s to the people we fuck, here’s to the people who fuck us, if the people we fuck are fucking with us, fuck them and here’s to us.” – Nico

La memoria imprime en blanco y negro, los grises se pierden por el camino.

If nothing hurts, that means I woke up dead,

The measure of a man’s estimate of your strength,” he finally told them, “is the kind of weapons he feels that he must use in order to hold you fast in a prescribed place.

I asked,”Are you going to pick up next time I call you?” ”I did this time didn’t I?” “Say yes.” “Yes. Conditionally yes.”…... …”What conditions.?” “Sometimes you do things like call me forty times a day and leave obscene voicemails and that’s why I don’t pick up.” “Ridiculous. That doesn’t sound like me. I’d never call an even number of times.

It was a mug. And it had a joke printed on it. It said, Engineers don’t cry. They build bridges and get over it.” Someone laughed then. Isabel or perhaps Gonzalo—I wasn’t sure. With all that crazy banging, my heart had somehow moved up my throat and to my temples, so it was hard to focus on anything besides its beating and Aaron’s voice. “And you know what I did?” he continued, bitterness filling his tone. “Instead of laughing like I wanted to, instead of looking up at her and saying something funny that would hopefully make her give me one of those bright smiles I had somehow already seen her give so freely in the short day I had been around her, I pushed it all down and set the mug on my desk. Then, I thanked her and asked her if there was anything else she needed.” I knew I shouldn’t feel embarrassed, but I was. Just as much as I had been back then, if not more. It had been such a silly thing to do, and I had felt so tiny and dumb after he brushed it away so easily. Closing my eyes, I heard him continue, “I pretty much kicked her out of my office after she went out of her way and got me a gift.” Aaron’s voice got low and harsh. “A fucking welcome gift.” I opened my eyes just in time to watch him turn his head in my direction. Our gazes met. “Just like the big jerk I had advertised myself to be, I ran her out. And to this day, I regret it every time it crosses my mind. Every time I look at her.

Exert some independence; you're not a little girl. You can't let anyone else decide things for you. You have to take care of yourself in this world, she said. I've never forgotten those words.

She envied Ralph his dying, for if one were thinking of rest that was the most perfect of all. To cease utterly, to give it all up and not know anything more - this idea was as sweet as a vision of a cool bath in a marble tank, in a darkened chamber, in a hot land. ... but Isabel recognized, as it passed before her eyes, the quick vague shadow of a long future. She should never escape; she should last to the end.

الكتابة هي تفحص طويل لأعماق النفس، رحلة إلى أشد كهوف الوعي عتمة.

They could not understand the advantage of living contrary to their inclinations in this world in order to enjoy a hypothetical well-being in another.

How many times have I told you not to believe everything you hear? Seek truth for yourself.

Are you still on Minnesota time?” I asked. “I am on whatever time makes this call last longer,” he said. “What’s the next meal from now?

whoopdie-friggin-doo, fooled you!

شيئًا فشيئًا أخذ غيابك وخسارات أخرى في حياتي بالتحول إلى حنين عذب

She regretted nothing she had shared with her lover, nor was she ashamed of the fires that had changed her life; just the opposite, she felt that they had tempered her, made her strong, given her pride in making decisions and paying the consequences for them.

But if God is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, if He is three in one in the Trinity, then God knows nothing of loneliness. God knows nothing of standing with his back to a gray morning, of dropping to his knees in the dust.

You only have what you give. It’s by spending yourself that you become rich.

Memoria selectiva para recordar lo bueno, prudencia lógica para no arruinar el presente, y optimismo desafiante para encarar el futuro.

The others slithered and crawled to get her the tanks and the belt, unaware that in order to really get my look, you had to accessorize with death in the family and generalized heartbreak.

That was a good time in my life, in spite of having the sensation of floating on a cloud, surrounded by both lies and things left unspoken. Occasionally I thought I glimpsed the truth, but soon found myself once again lost in a forest of ambiguities.

Escribo, ella escribió, que la memoria es frágil y el transcurso de una vida es muy breve y sucede todo tan deprisa, que no alcanzamos a ver la relación entre los acontecimientos, no podemos medir la consecuencia de los actos, creemos en la ficción del tiempo, en el presente, el pasado y el futuro, pero puede ser también que todo ocurre simultáneamente, como decían las tres hermanas Mora, que eran capaces de ver en el espacio los espíritus de todas las épocas. Por eso mi abuela Clara escribía en sus cuadernos, para ver las cosas en su dimensión real y para burlar a la mala memoria.

There can be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than to seize children from their parents, teach them whatever the authorities decree they shall be taught, and expropriate from the parents the funds to pay for the procedure.

Tenía la idea de que al poner nombre a los problemas, estos se materializan y ya no es posible ignorarlos; en cambio, si se mantienen en el limbo de las palabras no dichas, pueden desaparecer solos, con el transcurso del tiempo

I learned very quickly that when you emigrate, you lose the crutches that have been your support; you must begin from zero, because the past is erased with a single stroke and no one cares where you’re from or what you did before.

She never imagined a scenario in which her love was not returned with the same depth of feeling, for to her it was impossible to believe that a love of such magnitude could have stunned only her. The most elementary logic and justice indicated that somewhere in the city he was suffering the same delicious torment.

La besó en la mejillla lo más cerca posible de la boca, deseando con pasión permanecer a su lado eternamente para preservarla de las sombras. Olía a yerbas y tenía la piel fría. Supo que amarla era su destino inexorable.

It never dawned on us that life is unpredictable, that one day, one of us could suddenly cease to exist and what then? What would be the joy in having left so much unsaid? With what memories would we fill the empty silence?

Where's my cell phone?" I ask. "And please put a shirt on." He reaches down and grabs my phone off the floor. "Why?" "The reason I need my cell," I say as I take it from him, "is to call a cab and the reason I want you to put a shirt on is, well, because, urn . . ." "You've never seen a guy with his shirt off?" "Ha, ha. Very funny. Believe me, you don't have anything I haven't seen before." "Wanna bet?" he says, then moves his hands to the button on his jeans and pops it open. Isabel walks in at that exact moment. "Whoa, Alex. Please keep your pants on.

As my Popo used to say, life is a tapestry we weave day by day with threads of different colors, some heavy and dark, others thin and bright, all the threads having their uses. The stupid things I did are already in the tapestry, indelible, but I’m not going to be weighed down by them till I die. What’s done is done; I have to look ahead.

Coming back last time to the house she grew up in, Isabel had been reminded of the darkness that had descended with her brothers' deaths, how loss had leaked all over her mother's life like a stain. As a fourteen-year-old, Isabel had searched the dictionary. She knew that if a wife lost a husband, there was a whole new word to describe who she was: she was now a widow. A husband became a widower. But if a parent loss a child, there was no special label for their grief. They were still just a mother or a father, even if they no longer had a son or daughter. That seemed odd. As to her own status, she wondered whether she was still technically a sister, now that her adored brothers had died.

Sábado 23 de febrero Dios mío, qué aburrimiento. Sólo entonces formuló la pregunta más lógica: "Che, ¿total te casaste con Isabel?"."Sí, y tengo tres hijos", contesté, acortando camino. Él tiene cinco. Qué suerte. "¿Y cómo está Isabel? ¿Siempre guapa?" "Murió", dije, poniendo la cara más inescrutable de mi repertorio. La palabra sonó como un disparo y él -menos mal- quedó desconcertado. Se apuró a terminar el tercer café y en seguida miró el reloj. Hay una especie de reflejo automático en eso de hablar de la muerte y mirar en seguida el reloj.

The Nazis were impressed by the American custom of lynching its subordinate caste of African-Americans, having become aware of the ritual torture and mutilations that typically accompanied them. Hitler especially marveled at the American “knack for maintaining an air of robust innocence in the wake of mass death.

Rather than honor supremacists with statues on pedestals, Germany, after decades of silence and soul-searching, chose to erect memorials to the victims of its aggressions and to the courageous people who resisted the men who inflicted atrocities on human beings.

That summer and into the fall and in the ensuing years to come, amid talk of Muslim bans, nasty women, border walls, and shithole nations, it was common to hear in certain circles the disbelieving cries, “This is not America,” or “I don’t recognize my country,” or “This is not who we are.” Except that this was and is our country and this was and is who we are, whether we have known or recognized it or not.

It bothers them that instead of taking on the role of abandoned lover, I have become a happy wife. They relish seeing strong women like you and me humiliated. They cannot forgive us that we triumphed where so many others fail...Courage is a virtue appreciated in a male but considered a defect in our gender. Bold women are a threat to a world that is out of balance, in favor of men. That is why they work so hard to mistreat and destroy us.

A cell phone rings. I can feel the vibration through Brittany’s pants. “It’s hers,” I say. “Answer it,” Isa Instructs. I already feel like I’ve kidnapped the girl. Now I’m gonna answer her cell? Shit. Rolling her a bit, I feel for the bulge in her back pocket. “Contesta,” Isa whispers loudly, this time in Spanish. “I am,” I hiss, my fingers clumsy as I fumble for the phone. “I’ll do it,” Paco says, leaning over the seats and reaching toward Brittany’s ass. I whack his hand away. “Get your hands off her.” “Geez, man, I was just tryin’ to help.” My response is a glare.

Evil asks little of the dominant caste other than to sit back and do nothing. All that it needs from bystanders is their silent complicity in the evil committed on their behalf, though a caste system will protect, and perhaps even reward, those who deign to join in the terror.

How did you meet him?" I asked her. She smiled. "Here, actually. During a dinner rush. He was sitting at the counter and Isabel knocked a cup of coffee in his lap." "Ouch," I said. "No kidding. She was so slammed she just kept moving, so I cleaned it up and made all the apologies. He said it was okay,, no problem, and I laughed and said pretty girls get away with anything." She looked down, twisting her ring a bit so the diamond sat in the centre of her finger, "And he smiled, and looked at Isabel, and said she wasn't his type." There was a faint cheer from the stadium, and I saw a ball whiz over the far fence and out of sight. "And so," she went on, "I said, "Oh really? What is your type, exactly?" and he looked up at me and said, "You.

Ayer de tarde estábamos sentados junto a la mesa. No hacíamos nada, ni siquiera hablábamos. Yo tenía apoyada mi mano sobre un cenicero sin ceniza. Estábamos tristes: eso era lo que estábamos, tristes. Pero era una tristeza dulce, casi una paz. Ella me estaba mirando y de pronto movió los labios para decir dos palabras. Dijo: Te quiero. Entonces me di cuenta de que era la primera vez que me lo decía, más aún, que era la primera vez que lo decía a alguien. Isabel me lo hubiera repetido veinte veces por noche. Para Isabel, repetirlo era como otro beso, era un simple resorte del juego amoroso. Avellaneda, en cambio, lo había dicho una vez, la necesaria. Quizá ya no precise decirlo más, porque no es juego: es una esencia.

I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously.

Cities have often been compared to language: you can read a city, it’s said, as you read a book. But the metaphor can be inverted. The journeys we make during the reading of a book trace out, in some way, the private spaces we inhabit. There are texts that will always be our dead-end streets; fragments that will be bridges; words that will be like the scaffolding that protects fragile constructions. T.S. Eliot: a plant growing in the debris of a ruined building; Salvador Novo: a tree-lined street transformed into an expressway; Tomas Segovia: a boulevard, a breath of air; Roberto Bolano: a rooftop terrace; Isabel Allende: a (magically real) shopping mall; Gilles Deleuze: a summit; and Jacques Derrida: a pothole. Robert Walser: a chink in the wall, for looking through to the other side; Charles Baudelaire: a waiting room; Hannah Arendt: a tower, an Archimedean point; Martin Heidegger: a cul-de-sac; Walter Benjamin: a one-way street walked down against the flow.

I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously . . . And now I seek my hatred and cannot seem to find it. I feel its flame going out as I come to understand [its] existence . . . It would be difficult for me to avenge all those who should be avenged, because my revenge would be just another part of the same inexorable rite. I have to break that terrible chain. I want to think that my task is life and that my mission is not to prolong hatred but simply fill these pages . . .

What I really love about them... is the fact that they contain someone's personal history...I find myself wondering about their lives. I can never look at a garment... without thinking about the woman who owned it. How old was she? Did she work? Was she married? Was she happy?... I look at these exquisite shoes, and I imagine the woman who owned them rising out of them or kissing someone...I look at a little hat like this, I lift up the veil, and I try to imagine the face beneath it... When you buy a piece of vintage clothing you're not just buying the fabric and thread - you're buying a piece of someone's past.

So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century—the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light—are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;—in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use. HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862. [Translation by Isabel F. Hapgood]

Cole,” I said, “do you think I’m lovable?” “As in ‘cuddly and’?” “As in ‘able to be loved,’” I said. Cole’s gaze was unwavering. Just for a moment, I had the strange idea that I could see exactly what he had looked like when he was younger, and exactly what he’d look like when he was older. It was piercing, a secret glimpse of his future. “Maybe,” he said. “But you won’t let anybody try.” I closed my eyes and swallowed. “I can’t tell the diference between not fighting,” I said,“and giving up.” Despite my eyelids being tightly shut, a single, hot tear ran out of my left eye. I was so angry that it had escaped. I was so angry. Beneath me, the bed tipped as Cole edged closer. I felt him lean over me. His breath, warm and measured, hit my cheek. Two breaths. Three. Four. I didn’t know what I wanted. Then I heard him stop breathing, and a second later, I felt his lips on my mouth. It wasn’t the sort of kiss I’d had with him before, hungry, wanting, desperate. It wasn’t the sort of kiss I’d had with anyone before. This kiss was so soft that it was like a memory of a kiss, so careful on my lips that it waslike a memory of a kiss, so careful on my lips that it was like someone running his fingers along them. My mouth parted and stilled; it was so quiet, a whisper, not a shout. Cole’s hand touched my neck, thumb pressed into the skin next to my jaw. It wasn’t a touch that said “I need more”. It was a touch that said “I want this.” It was all completely soundless. I didn’t think either of us was breathing. Cole sat back up, slowly, and I opened my eyes. His expression, as ever, was blank, the face he wore when something mattered. He said, “That’s how I would kiss you, if I loved you.

He started to dance. And all at once, because Cole was dancing, I was dancing. And this Cole was even more persuasive than the last one. This was everything about Cole's smile made into a real thing, a physical object made out of his hands looped around me, and his long body pushed up against mine. I loved to dance, but I'd always been aware that I was dancing, aware of what my body was doing. Now, with this music thumping and Cole dancing with me, everything became invisible but the music. I was invisible. My hips were the booming bass. My hands on Cole were the wails of the synthesizer. My body was nothing but the hard, pulsing beat of the track. My thoughts were flashes in between the downbeats. beat: my hand pressed on Cole's stomach beat: our hips crushed together beat: Cole's laugh beat: we were one person Even knowing that Cole was good at this because it was what he did didn't make it any less of an amazing thing. Plus, he wasn't trying to be amazing without me--every move of his body was to make us move together. There was no ego, just the music and our bodies. When the track ended, Cole stepped back, out of breath, half a smile on his face. I couldn't see how he could stop. I wanted to dance until I couldn't stand up. I wanted to crush our bodies against each other until there was no pulling them apart. "You're an addiction," I told him. "You should know.

I felt an unrelenting restlessness. It was the first time I had ever experienced jealousy, and that emotion clung to my skin day and night like a dark stain, a contamination I could not shed; it became so unbearable that when finally I rid myself of it, I was freed forever of the desire to possess another person or the temptation ever to belong to anyone.

You know that there are no black people in Africa,” she said. Most Americans, weaned on the myth of drawable lines between human beings, have to sit with that statement. It sounds nonsensical to our ears. Of course there are black people in Africa. There is a whole continent of black people in Africa. How could anyone not see that? “Africans are not black,” she said. “They are Igbo and Yoruba, Ewe, Akan, Ndebele. They are not black. They are just themselves. They are humans on the land. That is how they see themselves, and that is who they are.

He handed me a bandana. "Tie that on." "Why?" I said, but I did it anyway. "Norman, you are way too into ceremony." "It's important." I could hear him moving around, adjusting things, before he came to sit beside me. "Okay," he said. "Take a look." I pulled off the blindfold. Beside me, Norman watched me see myself for the first time. And it was me. At least, it was a girl who looked like me. She was sitting on the back stoop of the restaurant, legs crossed and dangling down. She had her head slightly tilted, as if she had been asked something and was waiting for the right moment to respond, smiling slightly behind the sunglasses that were perched on her nose, barely reflecting part of a blue sky. The girl was something else, though. Something I hadn't expected. She was beautiful. Not in the cookie-cutter way of all the faces encircling Isabel's mirror. And not in the easy, almost effortless style of a girl like Caroline Dawes. This girl who stared back at me, with her lip ring and her half smile - not quite earned - knew she wasn't like the others. She knew the secret. And she'd clicked her heels three times to find her way home. "Oh, my God," I said to Norman, reaching forward to touch the painting, which still didn't seem real. My own face, bumpy and textured beneath my fingers, stared back at me. "Is this how you see me?" "Colie." He was right beside me. "That's how you are.

Throughout human history, three caste systems have stood out. The tragically accelerated, chilling, and officially vanquished caste system of Nazi Germany. The lingering, millennia-long caste system of India. And the shape-shifting, unspoken, race-based caste pyramid in the United States. Each version relied on stigmatizing those deemed inferior to justify the dehumanization necessary to keep the lowest-ranked people at the bottom and to rationalize the protocols of enforcement. A caste system endures because it is often justified as divine will, originating from sacred text or the presumed laws of nature, reinforced throughout the culture and passed down through the generations.

They traveled deep into far-flung regions of their own country and in some cases clear across the continent. Thus the Great Migration had more in common with the vast movements of refugees from famine, war, and genocide in other parts of the world, where oppressed people, whether fleeing twenty-first-century Darfur or nineteenth-century Ireland, go great distances, journey across rivers, desserts, and oceans or as far as it takes to reach safety with the hope that life will be better wherever they land.

Many people may rightly say, “I had nothing to do with how this all started. I have nothing to do with the sins of the past. My ancestors never attacked indigenous people, never owned slaves.” And, yes. Not one of us was here when this house was built. Our immediate ancestors may have had nothing to do with it, but here we are, the current occupants of a property with stress cracks and bowed walls and fissures built into the foundation. We are the heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it. We did not erect the uneven pillars or joists, but they are ours to deal with now.

Our Negro problem, therefore, is not of the Negro's making. No group in our population is less responsible for its existence. But every group is responsible for its continuance.... Both races need to understand that their rights and duties are mutual and equal and their interests in the common good are idential.... There is no help or healing in apparaising past responsibilities or in present apportioning of praise or blame. The past is of value only as it aids in understanding the present; and an understanding of the facts of the problem--a magnanimous understanding by both races--is the first step toward its solution.

She'll never understand. The realization washes all the fight out of me, leaving behind only heartache. I gently pull my wrist from her grip. "Because," I say, my voice so soft it's nearly swallowed up by the trees, "I'm standing here, telling you how much you hurt me, and you can't hear it." Tears fill my eyes. I've lost the strength to hide them. "You broke my heart, and you didn't even notice. How can I ..." My throat closes up, I look away. "How could I ever trust you to put the pieces back together?

Trató de volver a vivir ese momento, la tierra roja y húmeda, el intenso olor de los bosques de pinos y eucaliptos, donde el tapiz de las hojas secas se maceraba, después del largo y cálido verano, y donde la luz cobriza del sol se filtraba entre las copas de los árboles. Trató de recordar el frío, el silencio y esa preciosa sensación de ser los dueños de la tierra, de tener veinte años y la vida por delante, de amarse tranquilos, ebrios de olor a bosque y de amor, sin pasado, sin sospechar el futuro, con la única increíble riqueza de ese instante presente, en que se miraban, se olían, se besaban, se exploraban, envueltos en el murmullo del viento entre los árboles y el acantilado, estallando en un fragor de espuma olorosa, y ellos dos, abrazados dentro del mismo poncho como siameses en un mismo pellejo, riéndose y jurando que sería para siempre, convencidos de que eran los únicos en todo el universo en haber descubierto el amor.

There is a famous black-and-white photograph from the era of the Third Reich. It is a picture taken in Hamburg, Germany, in 1936, of shipyard workers, a hundred or more, facing the same direction in the light of the sun. They are heiling in unison, their right arms rigid in outstretched allegiance to the Führer. If you look closely, you can see a man in the upper right who is different from the others. His face is gentle but unyielding. Modern-day displays of the photograph will often add a helpful red circle around the man or an arrow pointing to him. He is surrounded by fellow citizens caught under the spell of the Nazis. He keeps his arms folded to his chest, as the stiff palms of the others hover just inches from him. He alone is refusing to salute. He is the one man standing against the tide. Looking back from our vantage point, he is the only person in the entire scene who is on the right side of history. Everyone around him is tragically, fatefully, categorically wrong. In that moment, only he could see it. His name is believed to have been August Landmesser. At the time, he could not have known the murderous path the hysteria around him would lead to. But he had already seen enough to reject it.