Javier Quotes

Life is a very bad novelist. It is chaotic and ludicrous.

Nuestra existencia es demasiado limitada como para pasar la mitad de ella huyendo.

Javier put me back together only to break me again.

People only get married when they've no other option, out of panic or desperation or so as not to lose someone they couldn't bear to lose. It's always the most conventional things that contain the largest measure of madness.

A veces confundimos querer estar solos con la necesidad de estar con la persona adecuada.

Se dice que, con el tiempo, los recuerdos se deforman, se pervierten y la imaginación los moldea a placer hasta convencernos de una ilusión

You are all mine, even if you run. I will find you because a soul needs its other half to truly live.

You shy, Francesca?” Javier asks me later on. I shake my head. “Not really.” I’m just sad, I want to say. And I’m lonely.

Listening is the most dangerous thing of all, listening means knowing, finding out about something and knowing what’s going on, our ears don’t have lids that can instinctively close against the words uttered, they can’t hide from what they sense they’re about to hear, it’s always too late.

Who is good and who is bad? Life isn’t black and white, Javier. You and I, we’re just trying to live in all the grey. Isn’t that what you’ve done? Isn’t that what you want? To live?

Me gusta pensar que en el fondo sí que somos las palabras que escribimos.

Y cuando pienso en ti me olvido de todo lo demás. Pero después me arrepiento porque sé que no está bien, sin embargo, sigues ahí. Siempre tú, siempre tú…

Nosotros marcamos nuestro destino con nuestras decisiones, y no podemos permitir que los miedos y las inseguridades nos impidan tomarlas.

Todas las almas sublimes tienen parte de locura.

-Las historias que surgen de las palabras son siempre las mejores. -Depende. También me gustan las que surgen de un beso o de una mirada.

We lose everything because everything remains except us. And therefore any form of posterity may be an affront, and perhaps any memory, as well.

Mom likes to call them my "angels," but I worry that takes away their humanity and their nonreligious capacity for love and compassion they showed a stranger.

Mental note to self: Next time make sure we're both naked before I piss her off. Javier

One of the best possible perspectives from which to tell a story is that of a ghost, someone who is dead but can still witness.

A veces, cuando leo un libro, aunque aparezcan dragones o mundo imaginarios, siento que son más reales que mi día a día...

I hope I'm always a part of you, Eden. You'll forever be a part of me. A world without you in it is a song without the music. You need both to make it whole.

La gente empieza viendo una cosa y acaba viendo la contraria. Empieza amando y acaba odiando, o sintiendo indiferencia y después adorando. Nunca logramos estar seguros de qué va a sernos vital ni de a quién vamos a dar importancia. Nuestras convicciones son pasajeras y endebles, hasta las que consideramos más fuertes.También nuestros sentimientos.

Javier opened her makeup kit, held it edge to edge with the dressing table, and swept everything--every vial, brush, tube, and bottle--into the kit with his forearm. Laura gaped at him. "That stuff is worth hundreds of dollars." He shrugged, then shut the kit. "That's how SEALs pack makeup.

Come now,” Javier said. “Sharing a bed with me isn’t that bad. You’ve been doing it for the last week. Is the inevitable sex too distracting?

Eat anything before you started drinking?" Xander asked. "Fuck off." "I can tell that vodka is helping you make great decisions." Javier glared. "Fuck off." "Has your vocabulary been reduced to two words now?" "No. Please fuck off.

La física es curiosidad, es preguntarse por las cosas más obvias, por las más absurdas, por las más inquietantes. Es preguntar.

End production today. Wrap party as usual a little sad. Slow danced with Scarlett. Broke her toe. Not my fault. When she dipped me back, I stepped on it. Penélope and Javier anxious to work with me again. Said if I ever come up with another screenplay to try and find them. Goodbye drink with Rebecca. Sentimental moment. Everyone in cast and crew chipped in and bought me a ballpoint pen.

La felicidad estaba en lo que tenía y no en lo que me faltaba...

-¿Cuál es tu historia, Phoenix? -Podría decirse que la mía está rota. Como todas las que me rodean ahora mismo. Historias inacabadas con personajes perdidos y sin rumbo.

-¿Qué es lo que quieres saber en realidad? -Si podrías llegar a querer a alguien que necesita reflejarse en los demás para recordar que tiene luz propia.

Javier to Hunter: "How long you and Dargangelo been married?

SWAT is already on its way. I'll be at your position in about ten minutes. SWAT should arrive in about fifteen to twenty." [Javier:] "I'll have her by then.

I have a tendency to want to understand everything people say and everything I hear, both at work and outside, even at a distance, even if it’s one of the innumerable languages I don’t know, even if it’s in an indistinguishable murmur or imperceptible whisper, even if it would be better that I didn’t understand and what’s said is not intended for my ears or is said precisely so I won’t understand it.

Leer es viajar sin moverse del sitio. Escribir es construir el camino para el viaje.

<<[...] desconfía de quien se haya olvidado de cómo llorar, porque tienen el alma árida, y en tierra árida no crece nada.>>

Es curioso cómo el pensamiento incurre en lo inverosímil, cómo se lo permite momentáneamente, cómo fantasea o se hace supersticioso para descansar un rato o encontrar alivio, cómo es capaz de negar los hechos y hacer que retroceda el tiempo, aunque sea un instante. Cómo se parece al sueño.

¿Temes hacer el ridículo? - intuyó - Aarón, ¿de qué sirve tener talento si te da miedo compartirlo con el mundo? - Haru

You didn’t bring any C-4, did you?” “Javier, you have to let that go. Let bygones be bygones.” He pulled his sidearm and clicked off the safety. “I’ll show you bygones.” “Now, now,” Garrett said, wrestling the gun from him. “Charley brings out the worst in all of us. It’s not her fault.” “He’s right,” I said. “I have a condition.

What happened is the least of it. It’s a novel, and once you’ve finished a novel, what happened in it is of little importance and soon forgotten. What matters are the possibilities and ideas that the novel’s imaginary plot communicates to us and infuses us with, a plot that we recall far more vividly than real events and to which we pay far more attention.

No me da miedo que me conozcan, sino que crean que me conocen cuando no saben quién soy.

Everything can be ridiculous or tragic according to who is doing the telling or how they tell it.

I’m scared of him. I’m disgusted by the vile monster he becomes, this beast he lets out. But I still love him. I’d still do anything for him. I can’t just turn off my heart. I want to, I do, but I can’t. I love him with everything I have and I hate myself for it. Because it’s wrong to love him, I know. It’s so wrong.

Some people think that being in love or infatuated is a modern invention that appears only in novels. Be that as it may, it nevertheless exists, the invention, the word, and our capacity for such a feeling.

The privilege is not writing a novel, it's to have someone read it. When you look at it that way, you realize the responsibility you have to put your very best on the page.

(...), el amor es la única ciencia incapaz de ser explicada... y la única por la que merece la pena luchar.

Buda dice...«El origen del sufrimiento es el apego».

Pero ahora, sencillamente, quieres ser mejor. Por ella. Y demostrarle que también puede aprender de ti, que tu pequeño mundo guarda secretos que ahora quieres compartir con ella.

Odiar a alguien es como beberte un vaso de veneno creyendo que así vas a matar a quien odias.

Daba igual cuánto intentáramos alargar una despedida. Hay un momento en el que se pronuncia la última palabra; un momento en el que las manos, los labios o las mejillas se rozan para no volver a hacerlo nunca más. Un instante en el que las miradas se cruzan sabiendo o sin saber que será la última vez que lo hagan. Y después... después solo quedarán los recuerdos y el olvido.

... I had stayed still and let the days pass, which is the best way to allow things in the real world to dissolve or break down, although they remain forever in our thoughts and in our knowledge, solid and putrid and stinking to high heaven. But that is bearable and we can live with it. Who doesn't carry something of that nature around with them?

It's always the chest of the other person we lean back against for support, we only really feel supported or backed up when, as the latter verb itself indicates, there's someone behind us, someone we perhaps cannot even see and who covers our back with their chest, so close it almost brushes our back and in the end always does, and at times, that someone places a hand on our shoulder, a hand to calm us and also to hold us. That's how most married people and most couples sleep or think they sleep, the two turn to the same side when they say goodnight, so that one has his or her back to the other throughout the whole night, when he or she wakes up startled from a nightmare, or is unable to get to sleep, or is suffering from a fever or feels alone and abandoned in the darkness, they have only to turn round and see before them the face of the person protecting them, the person who will let themselves be kissed on any part of the face that is kissable (nose, eyes and mouth; chin, forehead and cheeks, the whole face) or perhaps, half-asleep, will place a hand on their shoulder to calm them, or to hold them, or even to cling to them.

What happened between us both happened and didn't happen, it's the same with everything, why do or not do something, why say "yes" or "no," why worry yourself with a "perhaps" or a "maybe," why speak, why remain silent, why refuse, why know anything if nothing of what happens happens, because nothing happens without interruption, nothing lasts or endures or is ceaselessly remembered, what takes place is identical to what doesn't take place, what we dismiss or allow to slip by us is identical to what we accept and seize, what we experience identical to what we never try; we pour all our intelligence and out feelings and our enthusiasm into the task of discriminating between things that will all be made equal, if they haven't already been, and that's why we're so full of regrets and lost opportunities, of confirmations and reaffirmations and opportunities grasped, when the truth is that nothing is affirmed and everything is constantly in the process of being lost. Or perhaps there never was anything.

I don't belive in God. I believe in...Al Pacino.

All wars are full of stories that sound like fiction.

Como decía Kandinski, en el arte no hay reglas porque el arte es libre. Y si te sientes feliz pintando para ti sola, ¿quiénes somos los demás para decirte que cambies?

Es extraño cómo un pensamiento nos llega a veces con tanta nitidez y fuerza que ya no puede mediar nada entre él y su cumplimiento".

La actriz británica Margaret Lee decía que la felicidad no es un estado al que hay que llegar, sino una actitud con la que viajar.

es muy distinto lo que una persona quiere, a lo que una persona necesita, a lo que una persona dice que quiere.

También lo había hecho para no sentirse tan solo: al menos cuando leía, le daba la sensación de escuchar una voz que ya consideraba amiga, aunque solo fuera en su cabeza.

It wasn't until I began to see my own trauma as a creation myth that I could truthfully begin to heal. A myth is only a myth after all. It is not set in stone. It was truth, but shouldn't be truth forever...The myth can change.

Porque al final, eran esos los monstruos que se escondían agazapados en la oscuridad cuando crecíamos: las opciones que habías descartado a lo largo de la vida. Y madurar... madurar era tan solo cuestión de aprender a enfrentarse a ellas sin rencor ni arrepentimiento.

The truth never shines forth, as the saying goes, because the only truth is that which is known to no one and which remains untransmitted, that which is not translated into words or images, that which remains concealed and unverified, which is perhaps why we do recount so much or even everything, to make sure that nothing has ever really happened, not once it's been told.

. . .the books we don't read are full of warnings; we will either never read them or they will arrive too late.

La lengua en la oreja es el beso que más convence, la lengua que indaga y desarma, la que susurra y besa, la que casi obliga".

¿No te parece extraño lo fácil que resulta enamorarse de alguien y lo difícil que es llegar a conocerlo de verdad?

And we offer each other words of consolation or distraction or encouragement when we see that one or the other of us is in need of such words. We also miss each other (vaguely) when we're not together, she's one of those people (in everyone's life there are four or five such people whose loss one truly feels) to whom you're used to telling everything that happens to you, that is, one of those people you think about when something happens to you, be it funny or dramatic, and for whom you store up events and anecdotes. You accept misfortunes gladly because you know you can tell those five people about them afterwards.

It's just, with someone like Ellie, it'll be really hard for her not to fall back into old habits. Javier was her biggest habbit of all." The hole was opening, my heart threatening to sink in. I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands and wished they were sharper. "Camden," he said pointedly. "It would be Stockholm syndrome on steroids.

I never found out what happened to Chele, or to any of the countless others who were with me. I fear they died in the Sonoran Desert. This book is for them and for every immigrant who has crossed, who has tried to, who is crossing right now, and who will keep trying.

Todo el mundo obliga a todo el mundo, no tanto a hacer lo que no quiere, sino más bien lo que no sabe si quiere, porque casi nadie sabe lo que no quiere, y menos aún, lo que quiere

Todo en la vida tiene su por qué, pero solo se conoce cuando miras hacia atrás

Me resulta irónico que recemos para que Dios nos salve de un exterminio que hemos provocado nosotros

-Jamás me conformaría con pasar una sola noche a tu lado -respondió Adhárel-. Necesito estar toda la vida.

We all have to lead our own life, and we only have the one life, and the only people who can live life not according to their own desires are those who have no desires--which is the majority, actually. People can say what they like, they can speak of abnegation, sacrifice, generosity, acceptance, and resignation, but it's all false. The norm is for people to think that they desire whatever comes to them, whatever they achieve along the way or whatever is given to them--they have no preconceived desires.

Las personas tal vez consistimos, en suma, tanto en lo que somos como en lo que hemos sido, tanto en lo comprobable y cuantificable y recordable como en lo más incierto, indeciso y difuminado, quizá estamos hechos en igual medida de lo que fue y de lo que pudo ser.

One should never tell anyone anything or give information or pass on stories or make people remember beings who have never existed or trodden the earth or traversed the world or who, having done so, are now almost safe in uncertain, one-eyed oblivion. Telling is almost always done as a gift, even when the story contains and injects some poison, it is also a bond, a granting of trust, and rare is the trust or confidence that is not sooner or later betrayed, rare is the close bond that does not grow twisted or knotted and, in the end become so tangled that a razor or knife is needed to cut it.

All of the colors are amazing—some still linger at the edges of the sky, but when sunrise was at its peak, it felt like we were walking in a painting. Pinks, oranges, reds, purples, yellows, mixing together like watercolors. I thought I liked sunsets most, but I think I like sunrises better.

¿Sabes qué creo? Que deberíamos aceptar que todo el mundo cambia. Cada día. Cada segundo. Así de rápido. Yo el primero. Pero se nos olvida, supongo. O nos da miedo. Constantemente descubrimos cosas de nosotros que un minuto antes no sabíamos, y algunas de esas cosas redefinen por completo quiénes somos para protegernos de toda la mierda que pasa a nuestro alrededor.

Por encima de todo, había aprendido la lección que su soberbio hijo jamás entendería. Que el verdadero poder, si quiere perdurar, debe ser anónimo, permanecer oculto y manejar los hilos desde las sombras. Pues si nadie sabe donde reside, nadie intentará suplantarlo.

I want to come on every inch of your body,” he whispered, and somehow it didn’t sound dirty at all. It sounded clean, pure, like rainwater. “I want to rub it in you, like this, until it’s a part of your skin. I want to stain you, Eden. I want myself embedded in your skin, in your heart, in your soul.” I didn’t know what to say to that, so I sat up and put my hands on either side of his neck and kissed him as sweetly as I could. “You’ve stained me, Javier.” Excerpt From: Karina, Halle. “On Every Street.” Metal Blonde Books, 2013-03-08T11:00:00+00:00. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

The day we didn't spend together, we will never spend together, what someone was going to say to us on the phone when they called and we didn't answer will never be said, at least not exactly the same thing said in exactly the same spirit; and everything will be slightly different or even completely different because of the lack of courage which dissuades us from talking to you. ....none of that will ever be repeated and consequently a time will come when having been together will be the same as not having been together, and having picked up the phone the same as not having done so, and having dared to speak to you the same as if we'd remained silent

Sometimes I have the feeling that what takes place is identical to what doesn't take place, what we dismiss or allow to slip by us identical to what we accept and seize, what we experience identical to what we never try, and yet we spend our lives in a process of choosing and rejecting and selecting, in drawing a line to separate these identical things and make of our story a unique story that we can remember and that can be recounted, either now or at the end of time, and this be erased or swept away, the annulment of everything we are and do. We pour all our intelligence and our feelings and our enthusiasm into the task of discriminating between things that will all be made equal, if they haven't already been, and that's why we're so full of regrets and lost opportunities, of confirmations and reaffirmations and opportunities grasped, when the truth is that nothing is affirmed and everything is constantly in the process of being lost.

Lo que pasó es lo de menos. Es una novela, y lo que ocurre en ellas da lo mismo y se olvida, una vez terminadas. Lo interesante son las posibilidades e ideas que nos inoculan y traen a través de sus casos imaginarios, se nos quedan con mayor nitidez que los sucesos reales y los tenemos más en cuenta.

Cada vez que espero una respuesta me horroriza la idea de que no la haya y también de que llegue. Todo resulta luego un desastre, pero mientras está todo por suceder tengo la impresión de la absoluta limpieza y la infinita posibilidad. Me siento como con quince años, no me cabe el escepticismo, es raro. No puedo evitar hacerme ilusiones. (...) Por eso el estado perfecto es el de la espera y el de la ignorancia, lo malo es que si supiera que ese estado iba a durar indefinidamente entonces ya no me gustaría tampoco.

He (Antonio Machado) was old, weary and ill, and he no longer believed in Franco's defeat. He wrote 'This is the end; any day now Barcelona will fall. For the strategists, for the politicians, for the historians, it is all clear: we have lost the war. But in human terms, I am not so sure. Perhaps we have won.

We cannot know what time will do to us with its fine, indistinguishable layers upon layers, we cannot know what it might make of us. It advances stealthily, day by day and hour by hour and step by poisoned step, never drawing attention to its surreptitious labours, so respectful and considerate that it never once gives us a sudden prod or a nasty fright. Every morning, it turns up with its soothing, invariable face and tells us exactly the opposite of what is actually happening: that everything is fine and nothing has changed, that everything is just as it was yesterday--the balance of power--that nothing has been gained and nothing lost, that our face is the same, as is our hair and our shape, that the person who hated us continues to hate us and the person who loved us continues to love us.

...and yet the idea is hard to accept, it's so hard to succeed in making something happen, even what's been decided on and planned out, not even the will of a god seems forceful enough to manage it, if our own will is made in its semblance. It may be, rather, that nothing is ever unmixed and the thirst for totality is never quenched, perhaps because it is a false yearning. Nothing is whole or of a single piece, everything is fractured and evenomed, veins of peace run through the body of war and hatred insinuates itself into love and compassion, there is truce amid the quagmire of bullets and a bullet amid the revelries, nothing can bear to be unique or prevail or be dominant and everything needs fissures and cracks, needs it negation at the same time as its existence. And nothing is known with certainty and everything is told figuratively.

Casi todo el mundo se avergüenza de su juventud, no es muy cierto que se añore como se dice, más bien se relega o rehúye y con facilidad o esfuerzo se confina el origen a la esfera de los malos sueños, o de las novelas, o de lo que no ha existido. La juventud se oculta, la juventud es secreta para quienes ya no nos conocen jóvenes.

We live, I suppose, in the unconfessed hope that the rules will at some point be broken, along with the normal course of things and custom and history, and that this will happen to us, that we will experience it, that we — that is, I alone — will be the ones to see it. We always aspire, I suppose, to being the chosen ones, and it is unlikely otherwise that we would be prepared to live out the entire course of an entire life, which, however short or long, gradually gets the better of us.

It’s true that when we get caught in the spider’s web—between the first chance event and the second—we fantasize endlessly and are, at the same time, willing to make do with the tiniest crumb, with hearing him—as if he were the time itself that exists between those two chance events—smelling him, glimpsing him, sensing his presence, knowing that he is still on our horizon, from which he has not entirely vanished, and that we cannot yet see, in the distance, the dust from his fleeing feet.

You remember how he used to be girl on either arm? You really don't see that guy too much anymore. Why do you think that is? He's waiting for you. I know you're dealing with stuff but you cannot ask him to wait forever! Unless of course, you're okay with him pulling away." "What if it doesn't work out? What if it ends up like you and Javier?" "Well at least we gave it a shot. And so it didn't work out, so what? Now, we can move on give or take the occasional booty call." "I just don't wanna lose what we have, you know?" "Girl please! What exactly do you have, really?" "A friendship." "No. What you and I have is a friendship. What you and castle have is a holding pattern. How long can you circle before the fuel runs out?

Our lives are often a continuous betrayal and denial of what came before, we twist and distort everything as time passes, and yet we are still aware, however much we deceive ourselves, that we are the keepers of secrets and mysteries, however trivial. How tiring having always to move in the shadows or, even more difficult, in the half-light, which is never the same, always changing, every person has his light areas and his dark areas, they change according to what he knows and to what day it is and who he's talk to and what he wants... Sometimes it is only the weariness brought on by the shadow that impels one to tell all the facts, the way someone hiding will suddenly reveal himself, either the pursuer or the pursued, simply in order to bring the game to an end and to step free from what has become a kind of enchantment.

You don't even have to move for everything to become horribly complicated, for things to happen, for there to be anger and iitigation, you only have to breathe in this world, the slightest in-breath or out-breath like the minimum swaying inevitable in all light objects hanging by a thread, our veiled and neutral gaze like the inert oscillation of toy airplanes suspended from a ceiling, and that always end up going into battle because of that minimal tremor or pulsation.

And we offer each other words of consolotation or distraction or encouragement when we see that one or the other of us is in need of such words. We also miss each other (vaguely) when we're not together, she's one of those people (in everyone's life there are four or five such people whose loss one truly feels) to whom you're used to telling everything that happens to you, that is, one of those people you think about when something happens to you, be it funny or dramatic, and for whom you store up events and anecdotes. You accept misfortunes gladly because you know you can tell those five people about them afterwards.

yo no creo en esas historias que cuenta la televisión, personas que se encuentran y se quieren sin ninguna dificultad, los dos están libres y disponibles, ninguno tiene dudas ni arrepentimientos anticipados. Yo no creo que eso se dé nunca, jamás, ni entre los más jóvenes. Cualquier relación entre las personas es siempre un cúmulo de problemas, de forcejeos, también de ofensas y humillaciones. Todo el mundo obliga a todo el mundo, no tanto a hacer lo que no quiere, sino más bien lo que no sabe si quiere, porque casi nadie sabe lo que no quiere, y menos aún lo que quiere, no hay forma de saber esto último.

His mouth was a little too wide and snaked from corner to corner. His nose had been broken a few times, and when you looked at him straight on like I was doing as I stared at him across the circle bar, you could really tell. But his eyes were beautiful, cunning and otherworldly. His hair was a controlled mess; wispy dark strands that swooped across his forehead with long sideburns. He had high cheekbones, a strong jawline. When you combined all the parts, they equaled so much more than the sum. He was exotically, dangerously beautiful. He'd been mine once. He'd broken my heart once. And he was here to kill me. He only needed to do that once, too.

I do believe that love is based in large measure on its anticipation and on its recollection. It is the feeling that requires the largest dose of imagination, not only when one senses its presence, when one sees it coming, and not only when the person who has experienced and lost love feels a need to explain it to him or herself, but also while that love is evolving and is in full flow. Let us say it is a feeling which always demands an element of fiction beyond that afforded by reality. In other words, love always has an imaginary side to it, however tangible or real we believe it to be at any given moment. It is always about to be fulfilled, it is the realm of what might be. Or rather, of what might have been.

Seafood poisoning, a cigarette lit as the person is drifting off to sleep and that sets fire to the sheets or, worse, to a woollen blanket; a slip in the shower—the back of the head—the bathroom door locked; a lightning bolt that splits in two a tree planted in a broad avenue, a tree which, as it falls, crushes or slices off the head of a passer-by, possibly a foreigner; dying in your socks, or at the barber’s, still wearing a voluminous smock, or in a whorehouse or at the dentist’s; or eating fish and getting a bone stuck in your throat, choking to death like a child whose mother isn’t there to save him by sticking a finger down his throat; or dying in the middle of shaving, with one cheek still covered in foam, half-shaven for all eternity, unless someone notices and finishes the job off out of aesthetic pity; not to mention life’s most ignoble, hidden moments that people seldom mention once they are out of adolescence, simply because they no longer have an excuse to do so, although, of course, there are always those who insist on making jokes about them, never very funny jokes.

For me that's the only way of understanding a particular term that everyone here bandies about quite happily, but which clearly can't be quite that straight forward because it doesn't exist in many languages, only in Italian and Spanish, as far as I know, but then again, I don't know that many languages. Perhaps in German too, although I can't be sure: el enamoramiento--the state of falling or being in love, or perhaps infatuation. I'm referring to the noun, the concept; the adjective, the condition, are admittedly more familiar, at least in French, although not in English, but there are words that approximate that meaning ... We find a lot of people funny, people who amuse and charm us and inspire affection and even tenderness, or who please us, captivate us, and can even make us momentarily mad, we enjoy their body and their company or both those things, as is the case for me with you and as I've experienced before with other women, on other occasions, although only a few. Some become essential to us, the force of habit is very strong and ends up replacing or even supplanting almost everything else. It can supplant love, for example, but not that state of being in love, it's important to distinguish between the two things, they're easily confused, but they're not the same ... It's very rare to have a weakness, a genuine weakness for someone, and for that someone to provoke in us that feeling of weakness.

È il petto di un'altra persona a spalleggiarci, ci sentiamo realmente spalleggiati solo quando abbiamo qualcuno dietro, lo dice la parola stessa, alle nostre spalle, come in inglese, to back, qualcuno che magari non vediamo e che ci copre le spalle col petto che è sul punto di sfiorarci e che alla fine sempre ci sfiora, e a volte, addirittura, questo qualcuno ci mette una mano sulla spalla con la quale ci tranquillizza e al tempo stesso ci sottomette. In questo modo dormono o credono di dormire gran parte delle coppie, dopo la buonanotte i due si girano dallo stesso lato, di modo che uno dà le spalle all'altro per tutto il tempo e si sente spalleggiato da lui o da lei, e quando nel pieno della notte si sveglia di soprassalto per un incubo o non riesce a prender sonno, soffre per la febbre o si crede solo e abbandonato al buio, non deve far altro che voltarsi e vedere, di fronte a sé, il volto di colui che lo protegge, che si lascerà baciare quel che si può baciare in un volto (naso, occhi e bocca; mento, fronte e guance, tutto il volto) o che magari, mezzo addormentato, gli metterà una mano sulla spalla per tranquillizzarlo, o per sottometterlo, o forse per aggrapparsi. (da Un cuore così bianco, pag. 72)

Cos'è il kitsch? Prima di tutto, è un'idea dell'arte che implica una falsificazione dell'arte autentica, o come minimo la sua svalutazione sensazionalistica; ma è anche la negazione di tutto ciò che nell'esistenza umana risulta inaccettabile, nascosto dietro una facciata di sentimentalismo, bellezza fraudolenta e virtù posticcia. Il kitsch è, in poche parole, una menzogna narcisistica che nasconde la verità dell'orrore e della morte: così come il kitsch estetico è una menzogna estetica (un'arte che in realtà è una falsa arte) il kitsch storico è una menzogna storica (una storia che in realtà è una falsa storia). […] Così come l'ormai vecchia industria dell'intrattenimento ha bisogno di alimentarsi del kitsch estetico, che regala a chi lo consuma l'illusione di star godendo dell'arte autentica senza chiedergli in cambio nessuno degli sforzi che quel godimento richiede né costringerlo a esporsi a nessuna delle avventure intellettuali e a nessuno dei rischi morali che comporta, la nuova industria della memoria ha bisogno di alimentarsi del kitsch storico, che regala a chi lo consuma l'illusione di conoscere la storia reale risparmiandogli sforzi, ma soprattutto risparmiandogli le ironie e le contraddizioni e i disagi e le vergogne e le paure e le nausee e le vertigini e le delusioni che quella conoscenza procura.