Segovia Quotes

Tell them to walk in the shade. To listen with their eyes, to see with their skin, and to feel with their ears, because life speaks to us all and we just need to know and wait to listen to it, see it, feel it.

My heart is a cathedral. Widows, ghosts and lovers sit and sing in the dark, arched marrow of me.

Diles que caminen por la sombra. Que escuchen con los ojos, que vean con la piel y que sientan con los oídos, porque la vida nos habla a todos y sólo debemos saber y querer escucharla, verla, sentirla.

I am; ravaged, but spirited. Damaged, but still deserving.

It is in the deepest darkness that one sees things most clearly.

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.

sólo se ve a la perfección cuando echamos la vista atrás, y por eso la vida la llenamos de “hubieras”.

It was in my flaws, I found a much deeper truth and it is from them, I bloom ..a black rose.

she understood that, while life offers no guarantees, sometimes it does offer gifts;

Among God's creations, two, the dog and the guitar, have taken all the sizes and all the shapes in order not to be seperated from the man. -Andres Segovia

La vida no da garantías. A nadie. No espera a nadie. No tiene consideraciones con nadie.

...aunque la vida no da garantías, a veces sí da regalos...

Phantom Your heart must be a ghost. I can feel it mounting; a dark wave - upon the night of my soul

We walk without looking back, because on this journey, all we care about is our destination.

I do not wish to make light of the pain they must have felt at the loss of loved ones. Anyone who has been bereaved knows that the survivor’s recovery is a torturous road.

entendiendo por primera vez quizá, y de primera mano, el verdadero significado de la muerte: que no hay marcha atrás y que lo que no se dijo a tiempo, jamás se dirá.

Simonopio would never refute it: one should never contradict an act of love.

Letter 33 [To a discalced Carmelite nun in Segovia[63] Ubeda, October-November 1591]   ... Have a great love for those who contradict and fail to love you, for in this way love is begotten in a heart that has no love. God so acts with us, for he loves us that we might love by means of the very love he bears toward us. [63] This person's identify is unknown.

Because the perfect course of action can only be seen in hindsight, which is why we fill life with so many should haves.

One should not cling to old habits that no longer work in a changing world.

The miracle would have been if those arrogant fools with the fate of the country in their hands had listened in time to the voices of the experts. Now it was too late.

There are no ghosts in this house, my father would say to me. What you hear are the echoes it has kept to remind us of all those who’ve been here.

Siempre flotaban en el aire los perfumes de los dulces de leche y nuez que hacía mi abuela, los de sus conservas y mermeladas, los del tomillo y el epazote que crecían en macetas en el jardín, y más recientemente los de naranjas, azahares y miel.

por lo que para pasar de ese momento al siguiente, para sobrevivir, se debe dejar salir o abandonar la existencia.

Life waits for no one.

And there were things that it was better not to know. We would leave in order to forget the bad things: the absences and the abandonments. We would go to remember just the good things. And in our ignorance, we would heal.

But let me tell you what I know, what I’ve concluded: it doesn’t matter whether time passes slowly or quickly. What you can be sure of is that, in the end, all you want is to have more.

Estoy seguro de que en mis células llevo a mi mamá y a mi papá, pero también porto la lavanda, los azahares, las sábanas maternas, los pasos calculados de mi abuela, las nueces tostadas, el 'clunc' del mosaico traidor, el azúcar a punto de caramelo, la leche quemada, las locas chicharras, los olores a madera antigua y los pisos de barro encerado. También estoy hecho de naranjas verdes, dulces o podridas; de miel de azahar y jalea real. Estoy hecho de cuanto esa época tocó mis sentidos y la parte de mi cerebro donde guardo mis recuerdos

She remembered the promise that she had once made to no one but herself: not even in her old age would she allow herself to become anyone’s shadow. She would never be set adrift, at the mercy of other people’s decisions. She would never allow herself to stagnate.

Había sido madre y... ¿cómo se les llama a las madres que pierden a un hijo? ¿Amputadas?, así se sentía.

In life, only potential was free. The outcome, the achievement, the aim came at a high cost, which she was prepared to pay.

Still, in January 1919, in Linares, these details were of little interest, because absences were not measured in numbers or statistics: they were measured in grief.

He had tried to convey to the inhabitants of the town how important it was to remain in quarantine,

The three most acute months of the Spanish influenza crisis left the survivors of Linares and of the whole world with scars that would never heal and voids that would never be filled.

Muy pronto los actores principales de esa farsa a la que llamaban 2revolución" olvidaron los parlamentos del guión que habían acordado y cobraron vida propia escribiendo sus propios diálogos y monólogos de traiciones y balaceras.

But let me tell you what I know, what I’ve concluded: it doesn’t matter whether time passes slowly or quickly. What you can be sure of is that, in the end, all you want is to have more. More of those lazy afternoons when nothing happens, despite your best efforts to the contrary. More of those annoying arms that picked you up to stop you doing something crazy. More tellings-off from the mother who you thought was a nag. More glimpses, even, of your father hurrying somewhere, always busy. More soft embraces from the wife who loved you all your life, and more trusting looks from your children’s young eyes.

If you have any talent at all it is far better to move your audience than amaze them.

However, not even in her old age would she become anybody’s shadow or be left drifting, at the mercy of other people’s decisions. She would never allow herself to grind to a halt.

The work was tiring for her arms but restful for her soul.

Es en la oscuridad más profunda cuando se ven las cosas con mayor claridad - El murmullo de las abejas.

Sometimes the soul must be allowed to rest, kept away from the things that hurt it.

one should never contradict an act of love.

houses die when they’re not fed with their owners’ energy.

Their need for meat, groceries, worship, and sharpened knives was greater than their pain and sorrow. Such is life.

By the time the Spanish flu had completed its cycle, there was nobody in Linares who had not lost someone, so there was no one to ease the sorrow of others with their condolences.

La guerra les había robado entonces la paz, la tranquilidad, la certeza y la familia, pues por Linares pasaban bandoleros que mataban y robaban. Se llevaban cualquier falda que encontrarán en su camino. Feas o bonitas, viejas o jóvenes, ricas o pobres: no hacían distingos.

No sé su hay que tener mi edad para entender que a las mujeres uno nunca termina de entenderlas. Creo que existe un laberinto exclusivo de ellas y que a los hombres se nos permite atisbar desde afuera cuando ellas quieren, cuando nos invitan.

Madrid es la mas española de todas las ciudades de España.Cuando uno ha podido tener el Prado y al mismo tiempo El Escorial situado a dos horas al norte y Toledo al sur y un hermoso camino a Avila y otro bello camino a Segovia, que no esta lejos de la Granja, se siente dominado por la desesperacion al pensar que un dia habrá de morir y dejar todo aquello.

My mama complained all her life that, after I finally learned to speak, my favorite words were no, I do it, and not fair;

Si con cuatro meses de tu embarazo no te has enterado de cómo ni de por qué, yo ya no estoy para explicártelo. ¿Y cuándo? Qué te importa.

Había dos ángeles en la familia, además del niño, que era yo. Cuando mi mamá hablaba de mí, decía como disculpándose: éste es el niño. O es el pilón.

absences were not measured in numbers or statistics: they were measured in grief.

and he reminded me how important it was to listen. To listen to what life sometimes murmurs into your ear, heart, or gut.

know a memory from reality, even if I grow more attached to my memories than to reality with each day.

War was waged by men. What could God do against their free will?

In her world, a woman never left her parents behind, even when the parents left her.

But that day, the deceased, since she was dead, would be forgiven her every transgression.

perfect course of action can only be seen in hindsight,

In life, only potential was free.

As ever, whether fast or slow, time always passes, and grain of sand by grain of sand, every date arrives.

At my age, one realizes that time is a cruel and fickle master, for the more you want it, the faster it appears to vanish, and vice versa: the more you want to escape it, the more stagnant it becomes. We are its slaves—or its puppets, if you prefer—and it moves or paralyzes us at its whim.

And this is what I want to say: my memories, my impressions come with me. I don’t know about yours, but my reality goes with me wherever I go and leaves behind its capacity to reinvent itself, to develop.

Comprar terrenos y empezar de cero en otro lugar. En el pujante Monterrey. Sin embargo, en la intimidad y la inmediatez que proporciona dormir hombro con hombro, Beatriz le había dicho: Francisco, ya duérmete.

I’m also made of oranges—green, sweet, or rotten; of orange-blossom honey and royal jelly. I’m made of everything that touched my senses during that time and entered the part of my brain where I keep my memories.

He would have liked to discuss his bees and ask everyone why they didn’t hear them, given that they spoke to the others, too, as they did to him. Had he been able, he would have talked about the song the bees sang into his willing ear about flowers on the mountain, faraway encounters, and friends that had not made it on the long journey home; about the sun that would beat down hard one day but be covered in storm clouds the next.

Hence the name. Experts have tried to determine since then whether it began in Boston or in the military barracks of Kansas or Texas; it was exported from there to warring Europe in spring 1918 and to northern Mexico that fall.

we were taking his bones to be buried in his tomb in Segovia, his home town.’1 ‘And who killed him?’ asked Don Quixote. ‘God did, with a pestilential fever,’ replied the bachelor of arts. ‘That means,’ said Don Quixote, ‘that Our Lord has relieved me of the task I would have had of avenging his death, if anybody else had killed him; but seeing who it was that killed him, all one can do is shrug one’s shoulders and be silent, for that is what I should do if he had killed me.

Here’s a two-week alternative, which could include a few car days in southern Spain near the end of your trip: Start in Barcelona (two days); train to Madrid (five days total, with two days in Madrid and three for side-trips to Toledo, El Escorial, and Segovia or Ávila); train to Granada (two days); bus to Nerja (one day, could rent car here); both Ronda and Arcos for drivers, or just Ronda by train (two days); to Sevilla (drop off car, two days); and then train to Madrid and fly home.

I don’t know whether you have to be as old as me to have learned that women can never be fully understood. Their minds are a labyrinth that men are only permitted to glimpse from the outside when they want us to, when they invite us. Until then, the labyrinth remains a mystery.

So, take a deep breath: let the memories of that day come out. Remember your own, but recognize and incorporate the memories of others, as well: the ones you’ll allow to enter you only today, even if they’re uncomfortable, even if they’re painful, even if it seems as if they’ll make your heart stop.

Then he knew what it feels like when one’s heart really stops. A beat, two. Then he knew what a heart feels when it misses a beat, two, then remembers that, to live, it must beat again, even if the first beat hurts as if the chest has been split open. He knew the true horror that one feels when, without needing to be asleep, one falls endlessly; when the world collapses. He knew how one feels when, without warning, an uncontrollable pain invades the body, so great that it cannot be contained, so great that, in order to go from that moment to the next, in order to survive, one must let it out or cease to exist.

The empty hours of the night do not pass unnoticed, because in their unrelenting cruelty, they do not allow one to rest; they force one to think, and they demand a great deal. Because it is at night that fear is most frightening, yes, but it is also when sorrow becomes deeper and one regrets what one did or did not do more.

Then she thought that this would be one of her new challenges: to find the old Beatriz again, to rescue her from the miasma that enveloped her.

Es en la oscuridad más profunda cuando se ven las cosas con mayor claridad.

—La vida no da garantías. A nadie. No espera a nadie. No tiene consideraciones con nadie.

A quote is a quote, and a boat is a boat. What is a dream forgotten?

buena compañía—, en esa

Grandpa had died because he was a grandpa, and old people die because it’s natural for them to die, while young people live forever and are immune to everything.

he knew: the pretty pregnant lady carried death inside her. She was poison that would kill whatever it touched. Poison that would kill even after she was dead.

Because sometimes it was as if everything were a repetition: the same mistakes, the same warning signs, and the same governments, even if the faces changed.

Era una casa viva la que me vio nacer. Si a veces despedía perfume de azahares en invierno o se oían algunas risillas sin dueño en medio de la noche, nadie se espantaba: eran parte de su personalidad, de su esencia. En esta casa no hay fantasmas, me decía mi papá: lo que oyes son los ecos que ha guardado para que recordemos a cuantos han pasado por aquí. Yo lo entendía. Me imaginaba a los veintidós hermanos de mi abuelo y el ruido que deben de haber creado, y me parecía lógico que todavía, años después, se oyeran evocaciones de sus risas reverberando en algunos rincones.

At my age, one realizes that time is a cruel and fickle master, for the more you want it, the faster it appears to vanish, and vice versa: the more you want to escape it, the more stagnant it becomes. We are its slaves—or its puppets, if you prefer—and it moves or paralyzes us at its whim. Today, for instance, I would like to reach the end of this story, so I wish I could have more time—that time would slow down. You, on other hand, might want this old man you’ve just met to be quiet so that you can put on your music or think about something else, so perhaps your journey is taking forever. But let me tell you what I know, what I’ve concluded: it doesn’t matter whether time passes slowly or quickly. What you can be sure of is that, in the end, all you want is to have more. More of those lazy afternoons when nothing happens, despite your best efforts to the contrary. More of those annoying arms that picked you up to stop you doing something crazy. More tellings-off from the mother who you thought was a nag. More glimpses, even, of your father hurrying somewhere, always busy. More soft embraces from the wife who loved you all your life, and more trusting looks from your children’s young eyes.

Now they felt devastated, understanding—for the first time, perhaps, and firsthand—the true meaning of death: that there is no going back and that anything that was not said in time would never be said.

women can never be fully understood. Their minds are a labyrinth that men are only permitted to glimpse from the outside when they want us to, when they invite us. Until then, the labyrinth remains a mystery.

The memories and the pains, all of them—yours, other people’s—from start to finish, they require you. Today they will not let up: you must go to them. It hurts and it will hurt more, but you’re on the right path.

without his bees, he could not see or hear beyond the hills. Without them, he could not see behind him or observe the world from above when he chose to do so. In their absence, Simonopio could not smell the exquisite aroma of the pollen, just as the bees did. Without the bees swarming around him, coming and going, the information he received from the world was linear; while with them, from the moment he had begun to feel sensation, he had grown accustomed to perceiving the world as it was: a sphere.

All the versions of this story, which besieged me for years inside the walls of oblivion that I put up, took me by storm today. They’re other people’s versions, they’re mine, and together they’re a sphere: I see the whole, and I can no longer ignore it or leave it unfinished.

one realizes that time is a cruel and fickle master, for the more you want it, the faster it appears to vanish, and vice versa: the more you want to escape it, the more stagnant it becomes. We are its slaves—or its puppets, if you prefer—and it moves or paralyzes us at its whim.

At the time, the doors to the cathedral were kept locked because the federal government had ordered all gathering places to remain closed: theaters, movie houses, bars, and of course, churches. For a while, poor Father Pedro had defied the order, saying that nobody had the right to close the House of the Lord, much less refuse Communion to believers, even if fewer and fewer attended. Sick but soldiering on, he had died suddenly three days ago while reciting the Credo in the first mass of the day. The handful of churchgoers had run out without even crossing themselves.

The reality was that all manner of instructions could be given, but people needed to eat and they needed supplies. Some considered feeding the soul as important as feeding the body, so they, too, disregarded the order to not attend Mass. Father Pedro himself had refused to accept that the illness was capable of entering the church, much less spread and grow during the sacred ceremony. But this disease did not respect holy places, rituals, or people, as the pig-headed and dead Father Pedro must now know, wherever he was. Nor did the disease respect medical personnel. The town’s already limited hospital, founded by the ladies of high society, had closed its doors after the death or desertion of its nurses and the rest of its staff. Now Linares’s doctors and any surviving medical staff who dared do so roamed the town, like Cantú, visiting houses where they were not welcome.

This disease, however, had entered their lives treacherously, without warning. Now he traveled around the town wrapped from head to foot in thick clothes, with a scarf over his mouth, protective gloves over his hands, and his head covered. He visited the endless dying and did not dare to have skin-to-skin contact with them. He visited those to whom he could not give words of reassurance or hope in their agony, and those whom, in his outfit, he could not offer the comfort of seeing a friendly face at the end of life. For whenever they saw him arrive, they knew that it was to sentence them to death.

She observed her mother—old fashioned, elderly, diminished, prudish—and wondered if a person woke up one day saying, This is the moment my old age begins. Starting today, my brain will stop tolerating new ideas, my taste in clothing will stop evolving, my hairstyle will remain the same forevermore, I will read and reread the novels that brought me pleasure in my youth with nostalgia, and I will let the next generation—whom I no longer understand because I only speak “Old”—make my decisions for me, because I have nothing to teach them anymore. I’ll be company for everyone, but little more than that for anyone.

The life she was living now did not resemble the life that Beatriz Cortés was supposed to have. In spite of it all, the sun rose and set each day—though even that sometimes disconcerted her. Life went on. The seasons came and went in an eternal cycle that would not stop for anything, not even for Beatriz Cortés’s sorrows and truncated hopes.

As a young woman, Beatriz had always reflected on how it would feel to grow old. She observed her mother—old fashioned, elderly, diminished, prudish—and wondered if a person woke up one day saying, This is the moment my old age begins. Starting today, my brain will stop tolerating new ideas, my taste in clothing will stop evolving, my hairstyle will remain the same forevermore, I will read and reread the novels that brought me pleasure in my youth with nostalgia, and I will let the next generation—whom I no longer understand because I only speak “Old”—make my decisions for me, because I have nothing to teach them anymore. I’ll be company for everyone, but little more than that for anyone.

What a great temptation she felt to escape from the cruelty of the empty nights, the darkness, the loneliness, the cold bed, the sheets that gradually lost the aroma of the beloved body that had been wrapped in them for so many years. But time does not stop. Despite the painful absence beside her, the sun came up and set each day, though as a veteran of loss, this fact no longer surprised her so much. The empty hours of the night do not pass unnoticed, because in their unrelenting cruelty, they do not allow one to rest; they force one to think, and they demand a great deal. Because it is at night that fear is most frightening, yes, but it is also when sorrow becomes deeper and one regrets what one did or did not do more.

Tan buen pan hacen aquí como en Francia; y de noche todos los gatos son pardos, y asaz de desdichada es la persona que a las dos de la tarde no se ha desayunado; y no hay estómago que sea un palmo mayor que otro, el cual se puede llenar, como suele decirse, de paja y de heno; y las avecitas del campo tienen a Dios por su proveedor y despensero; y más calientan cuatro varas de paño de Cuenca que otras cuatro de límiste de Segovia; y al dejar este mundo y meternos la tierra adentro, por tan estrecha senda va el príncipe como el jornalero, y no ocupa más pies de tierra el cuerpo del Papa que el del sacristán, aunque sea más alto el uno que el otro; que al entrar en el hoyo todos nos ajustamos y encogemos, o nos hacen ajustar y encoger, mal que nos pese y a buenas noches.

And tell your mama I’ll come later, as soon as I can. Tell her to wait for me to have dinner, because she has a cake for you. It’s your birthday today. I wanted to show you everything today, but she stopped me. She said to me, “Bit by bit, Francisco.” And she was right: bit by bit. But I’m tired now. Look at me lying here. You go, but stay in the shade. Let me rest in my shade. Run so you reach the cake before the candles go out—they don’t last long. You’d better blow them out, blow hard, because I can’t now. I’ll stay to water the trees, soon as I can, because if you don’t irrigate them as soon as they’re planted, the roots don’t take. The roots are important, Francisco. Water the roots. Come on, Francisco, we’re a long way from home. Run now, or the candles will go out. I’ll watch you go, Francisco. Go on. Where are you? Have you gone?

At her age, she reckoned, with the things her eyes had seen, her ears had heard, her mouth spoken, her skin felt, and her heart suffered, she had been through enough to make anyone weary. She couldn’t explain why she was still alive or what she was waiting for before she departed, since she was no longer of any use to anybody and her body had dried up, so she preferred not to see or be seen, not to hear, not to speak, and not to feel.

If you’re a fly, you keep flying and being a nuisance. If you lived in Linares at that time, you could never stop going out to the fields or ranches to tend to your crops or animals. You might close the store for a few days because of the initial shock, but you would open it again because, even if your relatives were sick or dead, your needs and the needs of others—those who sold to you and those who bought from you—persisted. If you lived at that time, you could not avoid having to go out to buy food, and not a day could pass without washing diapers or underpants, even if you sent your mother to the cemetery two hours earlier. In the midst of this crisis, you had tooth decay, infected toenails, and stomach upsets—slight or severe—that you put up with for a while before having to seek help from a doctor, if you could find one. Others went out to sell goat milk, or whistles, yo-yos, and spinning tops in the square, in the hope that there were still children alive to buy them.

Now, too late, with no air in his body, he wished he could give her one—because he would have strength for only one—of those intense, loving looks that he had been saving up in order to use them in better times, for want of time, for want of energy, because he had been busy with his routine and because he had surrendered to his worries. If he had his wife in front of him just one more time, he would find a way to repeat in a single look all the tender words that he had said to her since they met.