“
I hated men because they didn’t stay around and love me like a father: I could prick holes in them & show they were no father-material. I made them propose and then showed them they hadn’t a chance. I hated men because they didn’t have to suffer like a woman did. They could die or go to Spain. They could have fun while a woman had birth pangs. They could gamble while a woman skimped on the butter on the bread. Men, nasty lousy men.
”
”
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
“
Love... doesn't happen every day. It doesn't happen at all for some people
”
”
Josh Lanyon (Snowball in Hell (Doyle and Spain, #1))
“
Spain is 4/5ths pain and 1/5th S. I drank that fifth, and I loved S.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (Love quotes for the ages. Specifically ages 18-81.)
“
Spanish rain,
A maiden’s dress,
Apothecary pills
And ancient thrills;
Melancholy kills
A girl’s caress.
”
”
Roman Payne
“
There are people whom one loves immediately and forever. Even to know they are alive in the world with one is quite enough.
”
”
Nancy Spain
“
But the best thing about Spain? Siestas. God bless any country that has decided yes, we shall shut down business and take a long nap in the middle of the day. How can you not love them for that?
”
”
Kristen Callihan (Managed (VIP, #2))
“
Spanish rain,
A maiden’s dress,
Apothecary pills
And ancient thrills;
Melancholy kills
A girl’s caress.
(—Roman Payne; Valencia, Spain, November 2nd 2012)
”
”
Roman Payne
“
Summer has never been the same since the 2000 Presidential Election, when we still seemed to be a prosperous nation at peace with the world, more or less. Two summers later we were a dead-broke nation at war with all but three or four countries in the world, and three of those don't count. Spain and Italy were flummoxed and and England has allowed itself to be taken over by and stigmatized by some corrupt little shyster who enjoys his slimy role as a pimp and a prostitute all at once--selling a once-proud nation of independent-thinking people down the river and into a deadly swamp of slavery to the pimps who love Jesus and George Bush and the war-crazed U.S. Pentagon.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness: Modern History from the ESPN.com Sports Desk)
“
I likened her to the slender PSYCHÉ and judged that the perfection of her face ennobled everything unclean around her: The dusty hems of her bunched-up skirt, the worn straps of her nightshirt; the blackened soles of her bare feet [...] All this and the pungent air! Ô this night, sweet pungent night! "HÉBÉ" may come but a season. But this girl's season would know a hot spring
and an Indian summer.
”
”
Roman Payne
“
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
There is joy and also pain
but the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
Pretty-plain, loony-sane
The ways of the world all will change and all the ways remain the same
but if you're mad or only sane
the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
We walk in love but fly in chains
And the planes in Spain fall mainly in the rain.
”
”
Stephen King (The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, #1))
“
When I look through your eyes, I see a disguise, and in that disguise, I see love, and in that love, you are fabulous.
”
”
Sahara Sunday Spain
“
Lisbon, to me,
is the Lisbon of Pessoa.
Just like London is Woolf’s,
or rather, Mrs. Dalloway’s.
Barcelona is Gaudí's
and Rome is da Vinci’s.
You see them in every crevice
and hear their echoes
in every cathedral.
I’d like to be the child,
or rather, the mother of a city
but I neither have a home
nor a resting place.
My race is humankind.
My religion is kindness.
My work is love
and, well, my city
is the walls of your heart.
”
”
Kamand Kojouri
“
A love story - your own, or anyone else's - is interior, hidden. It can never be accurately reported, only imagined. It is all dreams and invention. It's guesswork.
”
”
Joan Wickersham (The News from Spain: Seven Variations on a Love Story)
“
She knows by now that grief is about endurance, understanding over and over that the person you loved is not coming back.
”
”
Joan Wickersham (The News from Spain: Seven Variations on a Love Story)
“
I thought, There is nowhere else in the universe I would rather be at this moment. I could count all the places I would not rather be. I’ve always wanted to see New Zealand, but I’d rather be here. The majestic ruins of Machu Picchu? I’d rather be here. A hillside in Cuenca, Spain, sipping coffee and watching leaves fall? Not even close. There is nowhere else I could imagine wanting to be besides here in this car, with this girl, on this road, listening to this song. If she breaks my heart, no matter what hell she puts me through, I can say it was worth it, just because of right now. Out the window is a blur and all I can really hear is this girl’s hair flapping in the wind, and maybe if we drive fast enough the universe will lose track of us and forget to stick us somewhere else.
”
”
Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)
“
Why is that I never get cut off from pity, sympathy, participation, in spite of the fact that I am living out of my own dream, my interior vision, my fantasies without any interruptions. I dream, I kiss, I have orgasms, I get exalted, I leave the world, I float, I cook, I sew, have nightmares, write in my head, compose, decompose, improvise, invent, I listen to all, I hear all that is said, I feel Spain, I am aware, I am everywhere , I am open to wounds, open to love, I am rooted to my devotions, I am never separete, I am never cut off, never blind, deaf, absent. I hold on to the dream which makes life possible, to the creation which transfigures, to the God who sustains, to the crimes which gave life, to the illusions which makes the marvelous possible. I hold on to the poetry and the human simplicities.
”
”
Anaïs Nin
“
Paintings of Jesus with long hair and a full beard and of first-century Jews in Persian turbans and Bedouin robes are fantasies of later artists. The Hellenistic world created by Alexander the Great was remarkably homogenous in style. From Britain to North Africa, from Spain to India, people affected Greek manners. The earliest paintings of Jesus depict him as the Good Shepherd with short hair, no beard, and wearing a knee-length tunic. This is probably far more what Jesus looked like than the paintings we know and love. The apostle Paul admonished men not to let their hair grow long (1 Cor 11:14), which he would hardly have done if the other apostles or the Sanhedrin had worn their hair long; he certainly would not have written that if Jesus had worn his hair long.
”
”
James Allen Moseley (Biographies of Jesus' Apostles: Ambassadors in Chains)
“
Recorrí pasillos y galerías en espiral pobladas por cientos, miles de tomos que parecían saber más acerca de mí que yo de ellos. Al poco, me asaltó la idea de que tras la cubierta de cada uno de aquellos libros se abría un universo infinito por explorar y de que, más allá de aquellos muros, el mundo dejaba pasar la vida en tardes de fútbol y seriales de radio, satisfecho con ver hasta allí donde alcanza su ombligo y poco más. Quizá fue aquel pensamiento, quizá el azar o su pariente de gala, el destino, pero en aquel mismo instante supe que ya había elegido el libro que iba a adoptar. O quizá debiera decir el libro que me iba a adoptar a mí. Se asomaba tímidamente en el extremo de una estantería, encuadernado en piel de color vino y susurrando su título en letras doradas que ardían a la luz que destilaba la cúpula desde lo alto. Me acerqué hasta él y acaricié las palabras con la yema de los dedos, leyendo en silencio.
La Sombra del Viento
JULIÁN CARAX.
”
”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1))
“
But who is ever able to apply to her own current love affair a word like "similar"?
”
”
Joan Wickersham (The News from Spain: Seven Variations on a Love Story)
“
When it comes to the crunch, coming out is the greatest of all confessions. Nothing is more difficult to acknowledge. When we become ourselves we reach right back to the time when we were conceived out of our parents’ passion.
We murder their lives. There can never be any forgiveness.
”
”
Witi Ihimaera (Nights in the Gardens of Spain)
“
A story went around that someone had asked Mozart how he intended to refute his detractors.
"I will refute them with new works," he said.
It was a confident, valiant thing for him to say, everyone thought. I thought so too, when I invented the story; and I still believe it today. (172)
”
”
Joan Wickersham (The News from Spain: Seven Variations on a Love Story)
“
[To find a kiss of yours]
translated by Sarah Arvio.
To find a kiss of yours
what would I give
A kiss that strayed from your lips
dead to love
My lips taste
the dirt of shadows
To gaze at your dark eyes
what would I give
Dawns of rainbow garnet
fanning open before God—
The stars blinded them
one morning in May
And to kiss your pure thighs
what would I give
Raw rose crystal
sediment of the sun
”
”
Federico García Lorca (Poet in Spain)
“
Yes. Do not look at me like that,” I told him, pointing my finger at his frown. “In Spain, cousins and second cousins are immediate family too, okay? Same goes for uncles, aunts, and great-uncles and great-aunts. Sometimes, neighbors too.
”
”
Elena Armas (The Spanish Love Deception (Spanish Love Deception, #1))
“
On the last day of January 1915, under the sign of the Water Bearer, in a year of a great war, and down in the shadow of some French mountains on the borders of Spain, I came into the world. Free by nature, in the image of God, I was nevertheless the prisoner of my own violence and my own selfishness, in the image of the world into which I was born. That world was the picture of Hell, full of men like myself, loving God and yet hating Him; born to love Him, living instead in fear and hopeless self-contradictory hungers.
”
”
Thomas Merton
“
Time and judgment collaborate to produce farce, and farce in turn contains much truth; major characters upon the stage may turn out to be lackeys in disguise, while the figures we have overlooked in the midst of the frenetic action unmask and reveal themselves as divinities. (160)
”
”
Joan Wickersham (The News from Spain: Seven Variations on a Love Story)
“
That religion, which above all others was founded and propagated by the sword—the tenets and principles of which are instinct with incentives to slaughter and which in three continents has produced fighting breeds of men—stimulates a wild and merciless fanaticism. The love of plunder, always a characteristic of hill tribes, is fostered by the spectacle of opulence and luxury which, to their eyes, the cities and plains of the south display. A code of honour not less punctilious than that of old Spain is supported by vendettas as implacable as those of Corsica.
”
”
Winston S. Churchill (The Story of the Malakand Field force)
“
What we did not say was that with these hurts an edge was worn down. It happens out of necessity -- it would not be safe to carry a knife that sharp. But something is lost too: that early, perfect, impractical sharpness, which is so beautiful but which cannot survive being seen. (171)
”
”
Joan Wickersham (The News from Spain: Seven Variations on a Love Story)
“
I remember a story about Jesus meeting a rich man and really liking him. Jesus invited the man to go with him, to sell all his stuff and follow him. The rich man really wanted to go but didn't want to sell his stuff. Jesus looked at the man and loved him. Jesus didn't berate the man or chastise him but actually stood there and felt love for him. But in the end they went their separate ways. I used to think that story was about the dangers of wealth, and to some degree I suppose it is. But I also think it's a story about boundaries. Jesus didn't give up his purpose and community and calling to swim in the rich man's pool or vacation with him in Spain. I think that story about Jesus and the rich man also means that while everybody is invited, not everybody is willing.
”
”
Donald Miller (Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy)
“
Philippe, I’m going to Spain and I’m not coming back, at least not right away. You are going to Bordeaux and I know it will be only the first step in a long journey. I always knew you were made for somewhere else. Our paths are separating. I know you would have liked for things to be different, for me to say the words that would have reassured you, but I could not, and I never knew how to talk anyway. In the end, I tell myself that you understood. It was love, of course. And tomorrow, there will be a great emptiness. But we could not continue—you have your life waiting for you, and I will never change. I just wanted to write to tell you that I have been happy during these months together, that I have never been so happy, and that I already know I will never be so happy again.
”
”
Philippe Besson (Lie With Me)
“
Seems you don't always need lots of education to be wise
”
”
Cherry Radford (The Spanish House: A heartwarming escapist romance novel of family secrets and love set in sunny Spain!)
“
My favourite setting are England, because I was born here and love it, and Spain, because it's fabulous and so romantic.
”
”
Diana Hamilton
“
We trifle with France and labour with Germany, we sentimentalize over Italy and ecstacise over Spain- but England we love.
”
”
Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Shuttle)
“
Wisdom is the love of all loves, the water of all fountains, and the memory of all peoples.
”
”
Simon R. Doubleday (The Wise King: A Christian Prince, Muslim Spain, and the Birth of the Renaissance)
“
Dear Rodri,
I truly hope you find someone who makes your heart sing in the same way my own did every time you kissed my flaws.
Gràcies per estimar-me.
Ariadna
Menorca, Spain
”
”
Will Darbyshire (This Modern Love)
“
The Empire would love to rip Ukraine from Moscow’s bosom, evict the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and establish a US military and/or NATO presence on Russia’s border. Kiev’s membership of the European Union would then not be far off; after which the country could embrace the joys of neoconservatism, receiving the benefits of the standard privatization-deregulation-austerity package and join Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain as an impoverished orphan of the family; but perhaps no price is too great to pay to for being part of glorious Europe and the West!
”
”
William Blum (America's Deadliest Export: Democracy The Truth about US Foreign Policy and Everything Else)
“
Upon his first encounters with the native people he “discovered” in the West Indies, Columbus was struck by their kindness, generosity, and physical beauty. In a letter to the king and queen of Spain, he explained: “They are very simple and honest and exceedingly liberal with all they have, none of them refusing anything he may possess when he is asked for it. They exhibit great love toward all others in preference to themselves.” In his own journals, he was even more complimentary: “They are the best people in the world and above all the gentlest—without knowledge of what is evil—nor do they murder or steal… they love their neighbors as themselves and they have the sweetest talk in the world… always laughing.” A few pages on, in one of the most chilling pivots in recorded history, Columbus wrote: “They would make fine servants. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.
”
”
Christopher Ryan (Civilized to Death: What Was Lost on the Way to Modernity)
“
The sun, moon, stars, firmament, the sea and the earth have their fixed course, and if ever they do diverge from their regular course, they always correct themselves again; may Cortes, in his love of power, take this as a precept.
”
”
Bernal Díaz del Castillo (The Conquest of New Spain)
“
The Empire would love to rip Ukraine from Moscow’s bosom, evict the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and establish a US military and/or NATO presence on Russia’s border. Kiev’s membership of the European Union would then not be far off; after which the country could embrace the joys of neoconservatism, receiving the benefits of the standard privatization-deregulation-austerity package and join Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain as an impoverished orphan of the family;
”
”
William Blum (America's Deadliest Export: Democracy The Truth about US Foreign Policy and Everything Else)
“
My feelings-let's hold on to this idea of them as shuffling Victorians, let's make them servants, an entire uniformed household staff- were fresh, raw, perpetually startled.They weren't sensible. But they behaved themselves for a while. They were frank, earthy even, among themselves; but they were discreet. They were invisible, I wasn't even required to know their names. I underestimated their docility and overestimated my own power, and like all fables about arrogance, this one turned menacing.
”
”
Joan Wickersham (The News from Spain: Seven Variations on a Love Story)
“
The Saroyan Stairs were special. Before leaving for Spain, he hadn’t anticipated sharing his late-night pilgrimages there with anyone. Not even Marcus, much as Alex loved his best friend. Lauren’s presence wasn’t an intrusion, though. It was a completion.
”
”
Olivia Dade (All the Feels (Spoiler Alert, #2))
“
A Far Cry From Africa
A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
Of Africa. Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:
“Waste no compassion on these separate dead!”
Statistics justify and scholars seize
The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
To savages, expendable as Jews?
Threshed out by beaters, the long rushes break
In a white dust of ibises whose cries
Have wheeled since civilization’s dawn
From the parched river or beast-teeming plain.
The violence of beast on beast is read
As natural law, but upright man
Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.
Delirious as these worried beasts, his wars
Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum,
While he calls courage still that native dread
Of the white peace contracted by the dead.
Again brutish necessity wipes its hands
Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again
A waste of our compassion, as with Spain,
The gorilla wrestles with the superman.
I who am poisoned with the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?
”
”
Derek Walcott
“
Nathan kept trying to reassure him. “It doesn’t have to mean anything. Not to you. You can forget it, if you’d rather.”
Matt listened to Nathan’s heartbeat, fast and light like a deer flashing through sunshine and shadow. “Listen, Nathan…”
Nathan was silent, but Matt could feel the immediate tension down his spine.
“I loved Rachel with all my heart. You’re right, nothing changes that. But—I never wanted her the way I want you.”
Nathan slid out from under him, rolled over. His face was different, grave but sort of lit from within in a way that gave Matt a funny pain in his chest.
”
”
Josh Lanyon (Snowball in Hell (Doyle and Spain, #1))
“
Flambeau, once the most famous criminal in France and later a very private detective in England, had long retired from both professions. Some say a career of crime had left him with too many scruples for a career of detection. Anyhow, after a life of romantic escapes and tricks of evasion, he had ended at what some might consider an appropriate address; a castle in Spain. [...] Flambeau had casually and almost abruptly fallen in love with a Spanish lady, married and brought up a large family on a Spanish estate, without displaying any apparent desire to stray again beyond its borders.
”
”
G.K. Chesterton (The Secret of Father Brown (Father Brown, #4))
“
It’s a bit ironic, you know,” Henry says, gazing up at it. “Me, the cursed gay heir, standing here in Victoria’s museum, considering how much she loved those sodomy laws.” He smirks. “Actually … you remember how I told you about the gay king, James I?” “The one with the dumb jock boyfriend?” “Yes, that one. Well, his most beloved favorite was a man named George Villiers. ‘The handsomest-bodied man in all of England,’ they called him. James was completely besotted. Everyone knew. This French poet, de Viau, wrote a poem about it.” He clears his throat and starts to recite: “‘One man fucks Monsieur le Grand, another fucks the Comte de Tonnerre, and it is well known that the King of England, fucks the Duke of Buckingham.’” Alex must be staring, because he adds, “Well, it rhymes in French. Anyway. Did you know the reason the King James translation of the Bible exists is because the Church of England was so displeased with James for flaunting his relationship with Villiers that he had the translation commissioned to appease them?” “You’re kidding.” “He stood in front of the Privy Council and said, ‘Christ had John, and I have George.’” “Jesus.” “Precisely.” Henry’s still looking up at the statue, but Alex can’t stop looking at him and the sly smile on his face, lost in his own thoughts. “And James’s son, Charles I, is the reason we have dear Samson. It’s the only Giambologna that ever left Florence. He was a gift to Charles from the King of Spain, and Charles gave it, this massive, absolutely priceless masterpiece of a sculpture, to Villiers. And a few centuries later, here he is. One of the most beautiful pieces we own, and we didn’t even steal it. We only needed Villiers and his trolloping ways with the queer monarchs. To me, if there were a registry of national gay landmarks in Britain, Samson would be on it.
”
”
Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
“
There was some reason to call Pole heartless. His blood ran thinly in an effete body; no human emotion was urgent in him, neither love of family nor of country, and certainly not of women. But now he was forced to remember that his mother was also a woman, and to realize that her fate had lain at his door.
”
”
Margaret Irwin (Elizabeth and the Prince of Spain (Elizabeth Trilogy, #3))
“
The Three-Decker
"The three-volume novel is extinct."
Full thirty foot she towered from waterline to rail.
It cost a watch to steer her, and a week to shorten sail;
But, spite all modern notions, I found her first and best—
The only certain packet for the Islands of the Blest.
Fair held the breeze behind us—’twas warm with lovers’ prayers.
We’d stolen wills for ballast and a crew of missing heirs.
They shipped as Able Bastards till the Wicked Nurse confessed,
And they worked the old three-decker to the Islands of the Blest.
By ways no gaze could follow, a course unspoiled of Cook,
Per Fancy, fleetest in man, our titled berths we took
With maids of matchless beauty and parentage unguessed,
And a Church of England parson for the Islands of the Blest.
We asked no social questions—we pumped no hidden shame—
We never talked obstetrics when the Little Stranger came:
We left the Lord in Heaven, we left the fiends in Hell.
We weren’t exactly Yussufs, but—Zuleika didn’t tell.
No moral doubt assailed us, so when the port we neared,
The villain had his flogging at the gangway, and we cheered.
’Twas fiddle in the forc’s’le—’twas garlands on the mast,
For every one got married, and I went ashore at last.
I left ’em all in couples a-kissing on the decks.
I left the lovers loving and the parents signing cheques.
In endless English comfort by county-folk caressed,
I left the old three-decker at the Islands of the Blest!
That route is barred to steamers: you’ll never lift again
Our purple-painted headlands or the lordly keeps of Spain.
They’re just beyond your skyline, howe’er so far you cruise
In a ram-you-damn-you liner with a brace of bucking screws.
Swing round your aching search-light—’twill show no haven’s peace.
Ay, blow your shrieking sirens to the deaf, gray-bearded seas!
Boom out the dripping oil-bags to skin the deep’s unrest—
And you aren’t one knot the nearer to the Islands of the Blest!
But when you’re threshing, crippled, with broken bridge and rail,
At a drogue of dead convictions to hold you head to gale,
Calm as the Flying Dutchman, from truck to taffrail dressed,
You’ll see the old three-decker for the Islands of the Blest.
You’ll see her tiering canvas in sheeted silver spread;
You’ll hear the long-drawn thunder ’neath her leaping figure-head;
While far, so far above you, her tall poop-lanterns shine
Unvexed by wind or weather like the candles round a shrine!
Hull down—hull down and under—she dwindles to a speck,
With noise of pleasant music and dancing on her deck.
All’s well—all’s well aboard her—she’s left you far behind,
With a scent of old-world roses through the fog that ties you blind.
Her crew are babes or madmen? Her port is all to make?
You’re manned by Truth and Science, and you steam for steaming’s sake?
Well, tinker up your engines—you know your business best—
She’s taking tired people to the Islands of the Blest!
”
”
Rudyard Kipling
“
Those who portray Islamic Spain as an example of peaceful coexistence frequently cite the fact that Muslim, Jewish, and Christian groups in al-Andalus sometimes lived near one another. Even when that was the case, however such groups dwelled more often than not in their own neighborhoods. More to the point: even when individual Muslims, Jews, and Christians cooperated with one another out of convenience, necessity, mutual sympathy, or love, these three groups and their own numerous subgroups engaged for centuries in struggles for power and cultural survival, manifested in often subtle ways that should not be glossed over for the sake of modern ideals of tolerance, diversity, and convivencia.
”
”
Darío Fernández-Morera (The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain)
“
The rain in Spain falls on the plain. There is joy and also pain but the rain in Spain falls on the plain. Time’s a sheet, life’s a stain, All the things we know will change and all those things remain the same, but be ye mad or only sane, the rain in Spain falls on the plain. We walk in love but fly in chains And the planes in Spain fall in the rain.
”
”
Stephen King (The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, #1))
“
The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done--these are traits of the human race at large. We white people are merely modified Thugs; Thugs fretting under the restraints of a not very thick skin of civilization; Thugs who long ago enjoyed the slaughter of the Roman arena, and later the burning of doubtful Christians by authentic Christians in the public squares, and who now, with the Thugs of Spain and Nimes, flock to enjoy the blood and misery of the bull-ring. We have no tourists of either sex or any religion who are able to resist the delights of the bull-ring when opportunity offers; and we are gentle Thugs in the hunting-season, and love to chase a tame rabbit and kill it. Still, we have made some progress--microscopic, and in truth scarcely worth mentioning, and certainly nothing to be proud of--still it is progress: we no longer take pleasure in slaughtering or burning helpless men. We have reached a little altitude where we may look down upon the Indian Thugs with a complacent shudder; and we may even hope for a day, many centuries hence, when our posterity will look down upon us in the same way.
”
”
Mark Twain
“
Sweet wine from Spain and gossip from France; the sun in the windows dimmed, sorrowed prettily as the day declined, until the candles' light was mirrored in the glass. Their dabbling flames were like guesses at a feeling, the hearth's fire like the feeling itself. It was a beautiful pastime she had missed; hours that had stepped light-footed on Emilia's memory and passed on.
”
”
Sandra Newman (The Heavens)
“
My mind takes flight like a butterfly. There is so much to do. You can wander off in space or in time, set out for Tierra del Fuego or for King Midas’s court. You can visit the woman you love, slide down beside her and stroke her still-sleeping face. You can build castles in Spain, steal the Golden Fleece, discover Atlantis, realize your childhood dreams and adult ambitions.
”
”
Michael S. Gazzaniga (The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind)
“
To the traveller imbued with a feeling for the historical and poetical, so inseparately interwined in the annals of romantic Spain, the Alhambra is a much an object of devotion as is the Caaba to all true Moslems. How many legends and traditions, true and fabulous, - how many songs and ballards, Arabian and Spanish, of love and war and chivalry, are associated with this Oriental pile!
”
”
Washington Irving
“
They could not help loving anything that made them laugh. The Lisbon earthquake was “embarrassing to the physicists and humiliating to theologians” (Barbier). It robbed Voltaire of his optimism. In the huge waves which engulfed the town, in the chasms which opened underneath it, in volcanic flames which raged for days in the outskirts, some 50,000 people perished. But to the courtiers of Louis XV it was an enormous joke. M. de Baschi, Madame de Pompadour’s brother-in-law, was French Ambassador there at the time. He saw the Spanish Ambassador killed by the arms of Spain, which toppled onto his head from the portico of his embassy; Baschi then dashed into the house and rescued his colleague’s little boy whom he took, with his own family, to the country. When he got back to Versailles he kept the whole Court in roars of laughter for a week with his account of it all. “Have you heard Baschi on the earthquake?
”
”
Nancy Mitford (Madame de Pompadour)
“
The reunions are always joyous and the good byes bittersweet, everyone regretting they have so little time together. Thomas says that he doesn't know Vilalba very well because they usually just stay at the house for endless conversations, punctuated by laughter and complaints, long lunches and drawn-out dinners. He says that for him Spain is just people in his family who love one another, who eat and drink and cut each other off in conversation until night falls.
”
”
Philippe Besson (Lie With Me)
“
In Paris, Simon Thibault had loved his wife, though not always faithfully or with a great deal of attention. They had been married for twenty-five years. There had been two children, a summer month spent every year at the sea with friends, various jobs, various family dogs, large family Christmases that included many elderly relatives. Edith Thibault was an elegant woman in a city of so many thousands of elegant women that often over the course of years he forgot about her. Entire days would pass when she never once crossed his mind. He did not stop to think what she might be doing or wonder if she was happy, at least not Edith by herself, Edith as his wife. Then, in a wave of government promises made and retracted, they were sent to this country, which, between the two of them was always referred to as ce pays maudit, “this godforsaken country.” Both of them faced the appointment with dread and stoic practicality, but within a matter of days after their arrival a most remarkable thing happened: he found her again, like something he never knew was missing, like a song he had memorized in his youth and had then forgotten. Suddenly, clearly, he could see her, the way he had been able to see her at twenty, not her physical self at twenty, because in every sense she was more beautiful to him now, but he felt that old sensation, the leaping of his heart, the reckless flush of desire. He would find her in the house, cutting fresh paper to line the shelves or lying across their bed on her stomach writing letters to their daughters who were attending university in Paris, and he was breathless. Had she always been like this, had he never known? Had he known and then somehow, carelessly, forgotten? In this country with its dirt roads and yellow rice he discovered he loved her, he was her. Perhaps this would not have been true if he had been the ambassador to Spain. Without these particular circumstances, this specific and horrible place, he might never have realized that the only true love of his life was his wife.
”
”
Ann Patchett (Bel Canto)
“
One of the great causes why God cannot bless His Church is the want of love. When the body is divided, there cannot be strength. In the time of their great religious wars, when Holland stood out so nobly against Spain, one of their mottoes was: “Unity gives strength.” It is only when God’s people stand as one body, one before God in the fellowship of love, one toward another in deep affection, one before the world in a love that the world can see—it is only then that they will have power to secure the blessing which they ask of God.
”
”
Andrew Murray (Absolute Surrender)
“
I blame that little village in Spain,
the one with the whitewashed houses
in a crescent along the sea,
a fleet of pastel fishing boats,
and that celebrated coffee with brandy.
A sour wedge of apple lurked
at the bottom like a tea-leaf fortune.
Because we couldn't afford the fish
we ate pizza with peaches and oregano
on the beach, the sun and breeze conspiring.
Seeing us there beneath the cliffs
and the postcards of the cliffs,
who wouldn't have predicted luck and beauty?
Can I be blamed for loving it all
and thinking it was you I loved?
”
”
Chelsea Rathburn
“
But history,” wrote Dodd’s friend Claude Bowers, ambassador to Spain and later Chile, “will record that in a period when the forces of tyranny were mobilizing for the extermination of liberty and democracy everywhere, when a mistaken policy of ‘appeasement’ was stocking the arsenals of despotism, and when in many high social, and some political, circles, fascism was a fad and democracy anathema, he stood foursquare for our democratic way of life, fought the good fight and kept the faith, and when death touched him his flag was flying still.
”
”
Erik Larson (In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin)
“
She paused before continuing, "What is it you want, anyway? I mean, to expand your business? Triple the income? Buy yourself a castle in the south of Spain and leave Constable Catch endlessly running in circles?"
"Is that all improvement would be to you?" Crow's eyes narrowed as he surveyed Quincy's face. "Is that the pinnacle of where you would like to be?"
"Is there anything wrong with it?"
"No." Crow shook his head and shifted so he was facing Quincy straight on. "But is there anything right with it, love? Now, that's another question.
”
”
Beth Brower (The Q)
“
Political power is small, although from outside it can seem very large. Economic power is much more important, as is the power of media communication. They are true powers. What does political power do? Changes the laws. And what effect does that have? It's very relative. We know very little about how many laws are adhered to, and if they are followed what effect that has. We have to manage to create a change in attitudes and changes of attitude are obtained more through campaigns, through attitudes that set an example, than through laws, through sanctions etc. A change in attitudes of communication, cultural change, has an absolutely unstoppable effect. I have lived in a Spain when if you were gay you would be thrown in prison. Realistically, they haven't especially changed the laws, until we cleared up the possibility of marriage, but at the start of the democracy gay people were thrown in prison. The law barely changed but people's attitudes did. It was in films, on television, it was in novels, it was examples - gay people who came out of the closet, they were kind, we loved them; there was a change.
”
”
Manuela Carmena
“
Experiments in limiting reproduction to the undesirable classes were unconsciously made in mediæval Europe under the guidance of the church. After the fall of Rome social conditions were such that all those who loved a studious and quiet life were compelled to seek refuge from the violence of the times in monastic institutions and upon such the church imposed the obligation of celibacy and thus deprived the world of offspring from these desirable classes. In the Middle Ages, through persecution resulting in actual death, life imprisonment and banishment, the free thinking, progressive and intellectual elements were persistently eliminated over large areas, leaving the perpetuation of the race to be carried on by the brutal, the servile and the stupid. It is now impossible to say to what extent the Roman Church by these methods has impaired the brain capacity of Europe, but in Spain alone, for a period of over three centuries from the years 1471 to 1781, the Inquisition condemned to the stake or imprisonment an average of 1,000 persons annually. During these three centuries no less than 32,000 were burned alive and 291,000 were condemned to various terms of imprisonment and other penalties and 17,000 persons were burned in effigy, representing men who had died in prison or had fled the country. No better method of eliminating the genius producing strains of a nation could be devised and if such were its purpose the result was eminently satisfactory, as is demonstrated by the superstitious and unintelligent Spaniard of to-day. A similar elimination of brains and ability took place in northern Italy, in France and in the Low Countries, where hundreds of thousands of Huguenots were murdered or driven into exile.
”
”
Madison Grant (The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History)
“
Think of Chicago as a piece of music, perhaps,” he continued. “In it you can hear the thousands of years of people living here and fishing and hunting, and then bullets and axes, and the whine of machinery, and the bellowing of cattle, and the shriek of railroads, and the thud of fists and staves and crowbars, and a hundred languages, a thousand dialects. And the murmur of the lake like a basso undertone. Ships and storms, snow and fire. To the north the vast dark forests, and everywhere else around the city rolling fields of farms, and all roads leading to Chicago, which rises from the plains like Oz, glowing with light and fire at night, drawing people to it from around the world. A roaring city, gunfire and applause and thunder. Gleaming but made of bone and stone. Bitter cold and melting hot and clotheslines hung in the alleys and porches like the webbing of countless spiders. A city without illusions but with vaulting imaginations and expectations. A city of burning energies on the shore of a huge northern sea. An American city, with all the violence and humor and grace and greed of this particular powerful adolescent country. Perhaps the American city—no other city in the nation is as big and central and grown up from the very soil. Chicago was never ruled by Spain or England or France or Russia or Texas, it shares no ocean with other countries, it is no mere regional captain, like Cincinnati or Nashville; it is itself, all brawn and greed and song, brilliant and venal, almost a small nation, sprawling and vulgar and foul and beautiful, cold and cruel and wonderful. Its music is the blues, of course. Sad and uplifting at once, elevating and haunting at the same time. You sing so that you do not weep. You have no choice but to sing. So you raise up your voice and sing of love and woe, and soon another voice joins in, and you sing together, for a while, for a time, perhaps a brief time, but perhaps not.…
”
”
Brian Doyle
“
Their kindness, their generosity compared to cruel slave owners, made them blind to the unfairness of a system of slavery that they created, they maintained, and that favored them. It’s like the British bragging about the railways, the colleges, the hospitals they left us—their ‘kindness’! As though that justified robbing us of the right to self-rule for two centuries! As though we should thank them for what they stole! Would Britain or Holland or Spain or Portugal or France be what they are now without what they earned by enslaving others? During the war, the British loved telling us how well they treated us compared to how the Japanese would treat us if they invaded.
”
”
Abraham Verghese (The Covenant of Water)
“
How utterly lovely the Puerta del Sol was in those days, how exciting for a foreign tourist! This word has come into ill repute in recent years, because so many tourists have gone abroad with no preparation which would enable them to appreciate what they were about to see and no humility to make them approach the country on its own terms. In Spain I have always been a tourist and have been rather proud of that fact. This is the book of a tourist and the experiences described herein, are those which are open to any intelligent traveler. If, as I once heard an Englishman say, "to be a tourist is to stand gape-eyed with love," I have been one, and never more so that in my first days in Puerta del Sol. p376
”
”
James A. Michener (Iberia)
“
This is the man who hopes to be King of England. He has to marry a princess. He’s not going to marry some beggarly widow from the camp of his enemy, who stood out on the road to plead with him to restore her dowry. If he marries an Englishwoman at all, she will be one of the great ladies of the Lancaster court, probably Warwick’s daughter Isabel. He’s not going to marry a girl whose own father fought against him. He’s more likely to marry a great princess of Europe, an infanta from Spain, or a princesse from France. He has to marry to set himself more safely on the throne, to make alliances. He’s not going to marry a pretty face for love. Lord Warwick would never allow it. And he is not such a fool as to go against his own interests.
”
”
Philippa Gregory (The White Queen (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #2))
“
Philippe, I’m going to Spain and I’m not coming back, at least not right
away. You are going to Bordeaux and I know it will be only the first step in a
long journey. I always knew you were made for somewhere else. Our paths
are separating. I know you would have liked for things to be different, for me
to say the words that would have reassured you, but I could not, and I never
knew how to talk anyway. In the end, I tell myself that you understood. It
was love, of course. And tomorrow, there will be a great emptiness. But we
could not continue—you have your life waiting for you, and I will never
change. I just wanted to write to tell you that I have been happy during these
months together, that I have never been so happy, and that I already know I
will never be so happy again.
”
”
Philippe Besson (Lie With Me)
“
I thought, There is nowhere else in the universe I would rather be at this moment. I could count the places I would not rather be. I’ve always wanted to see New Zealand, but I’d rather be here. The majestic ruins of Machu Picchu? I’d rather be here. A hillside in Cuenca, Spain, sipping coffee and watching leaves fall? Not even close. There is nowhere else I could imagine wanting to be besides here in this car, with this girl, on this road, listening to this song. If she breaks my heart, no matter what the hell she puts me through, I can say it was worth it, just because of right now. Out the window is a blur and all I can really hear is this girl’s hair flapping in the wind, and maybe if we drive fast enough the universe will lose track of us and forget to stick us somewhere else.
”
”
Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)
“
I remember another story from church. I remember a story about Jesus meeting a rich man and really liking him. Jesus invited the man to go with him, to sell all his stuff and follow him. The rich man really wanted to go but didn’t want to sell his stuff. Jesus looked at the man and loved him. Jesus didn’t berate the man or chastise him but actually stood there and felt love for him. But in the end they went their separate ways. I used to think that story was about the dangers of wealth, and to some degree I suppose it is. But I also think it’s a story about boundaries. Jesus didn’t give up his purpose and community and calling to swim in the rich man’s pool or vacation with him in Spain. I think that story about Jesus and the rich man also means that while everybody is invited, not everybody is willing.
”
”
Donald Miller (Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy)
“
They eyed with mounting alarm the red flags and banners and portraits of Lenin, Stalin and Largo Caballero on huge placards, and listened to the chanting of the demonstrators, demanding the formation of a proletarian government and a people’s army. But it was not just these obvious political symbols that frightened them. The workers in the street had a new confidence or, in their view, insolence. Beggars had started to ask for alms, not for the love of God, but in the name of revolutionary solidarity. Girls walked freely and started to ridicule convention. On 4 May José Antonio delivered a diatribe from prison against the Popular Front. He claimed that it was directed by Moscow, fomented prostitution and undermined the family. ‘Have you not heard the cry of Spanish girls today: “Children, yes! Husbands, no!”?
”
”
Antony Beevor (The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939)
“
I’m rather an admirer of the book,” Robert said and took a sip from his glass. “Damien, when
you marry, you might want to see if Brianna won’t lend it out to your bride. I promise you no
regrets if you give it to your beloved. Let’s just say there are certain things a gentleman won’t
address with his wife that Lady Rothburg has no trouble discussing in detail.”
If his younger brother’s sinful grin was any indication, it was true.
“I’m headed back to Spain tomorrow.” Damien pointed out. “So I doubt romance of any kind is
in my future, but I’ll keep it in mind.”
“One never knows.” Colton commented. “Had anyone said it was in mine, I would have protested
vehemently.”
How true. How could anyone have guessed his upright older brother would marry such a lovely
but impulsive young lady and manage to become a different man than the upright,
unapproachable Duke of Rolthven?
”
”
Emma Wildes (Lessons From a Scarlet Lady (Northfield, #1))
“
Let Me Begin Again”
Let me begin again as a speck
of dust caught in the night winds
sweeping out to sea. Let me begin
this time knowing the world is
salt water and dark clouds, the world
is grinding and sighing all night, and dawn
comes slowly and changes nothing. Let
me go back to land after a lifetime
of going nowhere. This time lodged
in the feathers of some scavenging gull
white above the black ship that docks
and broods upon the oily waters of
your harbor. This leaking freighter
has brought a hold full of hayforks
from Spain, great jeroboams of dark
Algerian wine, and quill pens that can’t
write English. The sailors have stumbled
off toward the bars of the bright houses.
The captain closes his log and falls asleep.
1/10’28. Tonight I shall enter my life
after being at sea for ages, quietly,
in a hospital named for an automobile.
The one child of millions of children
who has flown alone by the stars
above the black wastes of moonless waters
that stretched forever, who has turned
golden in the full sun of a new day.
A tiny wise child who this time will love
his life because it is like no other.
”
”
Philip Levine (7 Years from Somewhere: Poems)
“
Social life was similarly affected by the teachings of the Koran. At a time when in Christian Europe an epidemic was regarded as a scourge of God to which man had but to submit meekly - at that time, and long before it, the Muslims followed the injunction of their Prophet which directed them to combat epidemics by segregating the infected towns and areas. And at a time when even the kings and nobles of Christendom regarding bathing as an almost indecent luxury, even the poorest of Muslim houses had at least one bathroom, while elaborate public baths were common in every Muslim city (in the ninth century, for instance, Córdoba had three hundred of them): and all this in response to the Prophet’s teaching that ‘Cleanliness is part of faith’. A Muslim did not come into conflict with the claims of spiritual life if he took pleasure in the beautiful things of material life, for, according to the Prophet, ‘God loves to see on His servants an evidence of His bounty’.
In short, Islam gave a tremendous incentive to cultural achievements which constitute one of the proudest pages in the history of mankind; and it gave this incentive by saying Yes to the intellect and No to obscurantism, Yes to action and no to quietism, Yes to life and No to ascetism. Little wonder, then, that as soon as it emerged beyond the confines of Arabia, Islam won new adherents by leaps and bounds. Born and nurtured in the world-contempt of Pauline and Augustinian Christianity, the populations of Syria and North Africa, and a little layer of Visigothic Spain, saw themselves suddenly confronted with a teaching which denied the dogma of Original Sin and stressed the inborn dignity of earthly life: and so they rallied in ever-increasing numbers to the new creed that gave them to understand that man was God’s vicar on earth. This, and not a legendary ‘conversion at the point of the sword’, was the explanation of Islam’s amazing triumph in the glorious morning of its history.
It was not the Muslims that had made Islam great: it was Islam that had made the Muslims great. But as soon as their faith became habit and ceased to be a programme of life, to be consciously pursued, the creative impulse that underlay their civilisation waned and gradually gave way to indolence, sterility and cultural decay.
”
”
Muhammad Asad (The Road to Mecca)
“
Who has not known you, O deep joys of wine? Whoever has had some remorse to appease, a memory to evoke, a sorrow to drown, a castle to build in Spain, in fact all men have invoked you, mysterious god concealed in the tendrils of the vine.
Wine is like man himself: one never knows to what extent one may esteem or despise him, love or hate him, nor of what sublime actions or monstrous crimes he is capable. Let us not then be crueller towards wine than towards ourselves, let us treat him as an equal.
Sometimes I think I can hear wine speak (he speaks with his soul, the spiritual voice heard only by the spirit) and he says: “Man, my beloved, I would pour out for you, in spite of my prison of glass and fetters of cork, a song full of brotherhood, a song full of joy, light and hope. I am no ingrate; I know that I owe you my life. I know what it cost you in toil, your back under the burning sun. You gave me life and I shall reward you for it.
I am the soul of your country. I am half-lover, half-soldier.
I shall light up your aged wife’s eyes, the old companion of your everyday cares and your oldest hopes. I shall soften her glance and drop into the pupil of her eye the lightning-flash of her youth.
Our close reunion will create poetry. Between us we shall make a god.
This is what wine sang in its mysterious language.
”
”
Charles Baudelaire (On Wine and Hashish (Hesperus Classics))
“
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Ganesh Shastriji (Best astrology tips to solve love problems +91-7357545955 (Love Problem Solution Book 2))
“
That same day we drove to Seville to celebrate. I asked someone for the name of the smartest hotel in Seville. Alfonso XIII, came the reply. It is where the King of Spain always stays.
We found the hotel and wandered in. It was amazing. Shara was a little embarrassed as I was dressed in shorts and an old holey jersey, but I sought out a friendly-looking receptionist and told her our story.
“Could you help us out? I have hardly any money.”
She looked us up and down, paused--then smiled.
“Just don’t tell my manager,” she whispered.
So we stayed in a $1,000-a-night room for $100 and celebrated--like the King of Spain.
The next morning we went on a hunt for a ring.
I asked the concierge in my best university Spanish where I would find a good (aka well-priced) jeweler.
He looked a little surprised.
I tried speaking slower. Eventually I realized that I had actually been asking him where I might find a good mustache shop.
I apologized that my Spanish was a little rusty. Shara rolled her eyes again, smiling.
When we eventually found a small local jeweler, I had to do some nifty subcounter mathematics, swiftly converting Spanish pesetas into British pounds, to work out whether or not I could afford each ring Shara tried on.
We eventually settled on one that was simple, beautiful--and affordable. Just.
Love doesn’t require expensive jewelry. And Shara has always been able to make the simple look exquisite.
Luckily.
”
”
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
“
There is a natural talent or mother wit, as it is called, about the Spaniards, which renders them intellectual and agreeable companions, whatever may be their condition in life, or however imperfect may have been their education: add to this, they are never vulgar; nature has endowed them with an inherent dignity of spirit.
There are none who understand the art of doing nothing and living upon nothing than the poor classes of Spain. Climate does one half and temperament the rest. Give a Spaniard the shade in summer and the sun in winter; a little bread, garlic, oil and garbances, an old brown cloak and a guitar and let the world roll on as it pleases. Talk of poverty! with him it has no disgrace. It sits upon him with a grandiose style, like his ragged cloak. He is a hidalgo, even when in rags.
Who can do justice to a moonlight night in such a climate and such a place?The temperature of a summer midnight in Andalusia is perfectly ethereal. We seem lifted up into a purer atmosphere; we feel a serenity of soul, a buoyancy of spirits, an elasticity of frame, which render mere existence happiness. But when moonlight is added to all this, the effect is like enchantment.
Enjoying that mixture of reverie and sensation which steal away existence in a southern climate.
The sage Ebben Bonabben shook his dry head at the words. Here is an end to philosophy, thought he. The prince has discovered he has a heart.
Love is the torment of one, the felicity of two, the strife and enmity of three.
”
”
Washington Irving
“
Sleeping on the Wing
Perhaps it is to avoid some great sadness,
as in a Restoration tragedy the hero cries 'Sleep!
O for a long sound sleep and so forget it! '
that one flies, soaring above the shoreless city,
veering upward from the pavement as a pigeon
does when a car honks or a door slams, the door
of dreams, life perpetuated in parti-colored loves
and beautiful lies all in different languages.
Fear drops away too, like the cement, and you
are over the Atlantic. Where is Spain? where is
who? The Civil War was fought to free the slaves,
was it? A sudden down-draught reminds you of gravity
and your position in respect to human love. But
here is where the gods are, speculating, bemused.
Once you are helpless, you are free, can you believe
that? Never to waken to the sad struggle of a face?
to travel always over some impersonal vastness,
to be out of, forever, neither in nor for!
The eyes roll asleep as if turned by the wind
and the lids flutter open slightly like a wing.
The world is an iceberg, so much is invisible!
and was and is, and yet the form, it may be sleeping
too. Those features etched in the ice of someone
loved who died, you are a sculptor dreaming of space
and speed, your hand alone could have done this.
Curiosity, the passionate hand of desire. Dead,
or sleeping? Is there speed enough? And, swooping,
you relinquish all that you have made your own,
the kingdom of your self sailing, for you must awake
and breathe your warmth in this beloved image
whether it's dead or merely disappearing,
as space is disappearing and your singularity
Frank O’Hara, The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara. (University of California Press March 31, 1995)
”
”
Frank O'Hara (The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara)
“
My identity as Jewish cannot be reduced to a religious affiliation. Professor Said quoted Gramsci, an author that I’m familiar with, that, and I quote, ‘to know thyself is to understand that we are a product of the historical process to date which has deposited an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory’. Let’s apply this pithy observation to Jewish identity. While it is tempting to equate Judaism with Jewishness, I submit to you that my identity as someone who is Jewish is far more complex than my religious affiliation. The collective inventory of the Jewish people rests on my shoulders. This inventory shapes and defines my understanding of what it means to be Jewish. The narrative of my people is a story of extraordinary achievement as well as unimaginable horror.
For millennia, the Jewish people have left their fate in the hands of others. Our history is filled with extraordinary achievements as well as unimaginable violence. Our centuries-long Diaspora defined our existential identity in ways that cannot be reduced to simple labels. It was the portability of our religion that bound us together as a people, but it was our struggle to fit in; to be accepted that identified us as unique. Despite the fact that we excelled academically, professionally, industrially, we were never looked upon as anything other than Jewish. Professor Said in his book, Orientalism, examined how Europe looked upon the Orient as a dehumanized sea of amorphous otherness. If we accept this point of view, then my question is: How do you explain Western attitudes towards the Jews? We have always been a convenient object of hatred and violent retribution whenever it became convenient.
If Europe reduced the Orient to an essentialist other, to borrow Professor Said’s eloquent language, then how do we explain the dehumanizing treatment of Jews who lived in the heart of Europe? We did not live in a distant, exotic land where the West had discursive power over us. We thought of ourselves as assimilated. We studied Western philosophy, literature, music, and internalized the same culture as our dominant Christian brethren. Despite our contribution to every conceivable field of human endeavor, we were never fully accepted as equals. On the contrary, we were always the first to be blamed for the ills of Western Europe. Two hundred thousand Jews were forcibly removed from Spain in 1492 and thousands more were forcibly converted to Christianity in Portugal four years later.
By the time we get to the Holocaust, our worst fears were realized. Jewish history and consciousness will be dominated by the traumatic memories of this unspeakable event. No people in history have undergone an experience of such violence and depth. Israel’s obsession with physical security; the sharp Jewish reaction to movements of discrimination and prejudice; an intoxicated awareness of life, not as something to be taken for granted but as a treasure to be fostered and nourished with eager vitality, a residual distrust of what lies beyond the Jewish wall, a mystical belief in the undying forces of Jewish history, which ensure survival when all appears lost; all these, together with the intimacy of more personal pains and agonies, are the legacy which the Holocaust transmits to the generation of Jews who have grown up under its shadow.
-Fictional debate between Edward Said and Abba Eban.
”
”
R.F. Georgy (Absolution: A Palestinian Israeli Love Story)
“
Real life is so all-absorbing that it doesn’t leave us time to create an imaginary, parallel life.
It’s very hard not to stay in love with or be captivated by someone who makes us laugh and does so even though he often mistreats us; the hardest thing to give up is that companionable laughter, once you’ve met someone and decided to stay with them.
How cast down we are by rejection, and how much power accrues to the person to whom we gave that power, for no one can take power unless it is first given or conferred, unless you’re prepared to adore and fear that person, unless you aspire to being loved by him or to enjoy his unswerving approval, any such ambition is a sign of conceit and that conceit is what weakens and leaves us defenseless: once that ambition remains unsatisfied or unfulfilled, it marks the beginning of our downfall.
Sensations are unstable things, they become transformed in memory, they shift and dance, they can prevail over what was said and heard, over rejection or acceptance. Sometimes, sensations can make us give up and, at others, encourage us to try again.
That Spanish mania for mixing business deals with a semblance of incipient friendship.
In Spain, oddly enough, it’s considered far more prestigious to be known by one’s first name, and this applies to only four or five or six people: “Federico” is always García Lorca, just as “Rubén” is Rubén Darío, “Juan Ramón” is the Nobel Laureate Jiménez, “Ramón” is Gómez de la Serna, “Mossèn Cinto” is Verdaguer and, five centuries on, “Garcilaso” is Garcilaso de la Vega.
In the face of ignorance, one is always free to invent.
“Far too civilized. Airport hub. Business deals by the shedload. No, I don’t like it, I don’t like it all. Tons of visitors. The annual Buchmesse. Money calling to money.
Rumor on the other hand is what lasts, it’s unstoppable, undying, the one thing that endures. I certainly don’t want to give that imbecile the gift of a rumor.
He probably often had such attacks of oral literature.
Whoever he was with and whatever the circumstances, he found it hard not to slip into pedantic, didactic mode.
Like many unhappy, lonely people, he kept a diary.
Curiosity makes us lose all caution.
Unhappy people often insist on trying to uncover the full magnitude of their unhappiness, or choose to investigate other people’s lives as a distraction from their own.
The eyes of the imagination, which are the eyes that best remember a scene and best recall it later.
In the middle of the night everything seems plausible and real.
Desire is a selfish thing too and will do almost anything to achieve satisfaction—lie, flatter, take risks, inveigle, make false promises.
A nostalgia for the life you discarded always lingers on in the inner depths of your being, and, during bad times, you seek refuge in it as you might in a daydream or a fantasy.
I sometimes think that the bonds of deceit and unhappiness are the strongest of all, as are those of error; they may bind even more closely than those of openness, contentment and sincerity.
We do sometimes bring about what we most fear because the only way of freeing ourselves from that fear is for the bad thing actually to have happened, for it to be in the past and not in the future or in the realm of possibilities. For it to remain behind.
”
”
Javier Marías (Así empieza lo malo)
“
In contrast to most of the examples given in this chapter, it is occasionally recorded that even solitary confinement imposed by enemies can be the trigger for psychological experiences of lasting value. Anthony Grey, who experienced solitary confinement in China, and Arthur Koestler, who was similarly imprisoned in Spain, discussed their experiences together on television. The transcript of their discussion appears in Koestl’s collection of essays, Kaleidoscope. Both men were grateful that they did not have to share a cell with another prisoner. Both felt that solitude enhanced their appreciation of, and sympathy with, their fellow men. Both had intense experiences of feeling that some kind of higher order of reality existed with which solitude put them in touch. Both felt that trying to put this experience into words tended to trivialize it, because words could not really express it. Although neither man subscribed to any orthodox religious belief, both agreed that they had felt the abstract existence of something which was indefinable or which could only be expressed in symbols. Anthony Grey thought that his experience had given him a new awareness and appreciation of normal life. Koestler concurred, but added that he had also become more aware of horrors lurking under the surface. Koestler also refers to a feeling of inner freedom, of being alone and confronted with ultimate realities instead of with your bank statement. Your bank statement and other trivialities are again a kind of confinement. Not in space but in spiritual space . . . So you have got a dialogue with existence. A dialogue with life, a dialogue with death. Grey comments that this is an area of experience into which most people do not enter. Koesder righdy affirms that most people have occasional confrontations of this kind when they are severely ill or when a parent dies, or when they first fall in love. Then they are transferred from what I call the trivial plane to the tragic or absolute plane. But it only happens a few times. Whereas in the type of experience which we shared, one has one’s nose rubbed into it, for a protracted period.17 So, occasionally, good can come out of evil. Anthony Grey recalled being shown a painting by a Chinese friend in which a beautiful lotus flower is growing out of mud. The human spirit is not indestructible; but a courageous few discover that, when in hell, they are granted a glimpse of heaven.
”
”
Anthony Storr (Solitude a Return to the Self)
“
Anne was curled up Turk-fashion on the hearthrug, gazing into that joyous glow where the sunshine of a hundred summers was being distilled from the maple cordwood. She had been reading, but her book had slipped to the floor, and now she was dreaming, with a smile on her parted lips. Glittering castles in Spain were shaping themselves out of the mists and rainbows of her lively fancy; adventures wonderful and enthralling were happening to her in cloudland—adventures that always turned out triumphantly and never involved her in scrapes like those of actual life. Marilla looked at her with a tenderness that would never have been suffered to reveal itself in any clearer light than that soft mingling of fireshine and shadow. The lesson of a love that should display itself easily in spoken word and open look was one Marilla could never learn.
”
”
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1))
“
Thule, the period of cosmography,
Doth vaunt of Hecla, whose sulfurous fire
Doth melt the frozen clime and thaw the sky;
Trinacrian Etna's flames ascend no higher:
These things seem wondrous, yet more wondrous I,
Whose heart with fear doth freeze, with love doth fry.
The Andalusian merchant, that returns
Laden with cochineal and china dishes,
Reports in Spain how strangely Fogo burns
Amidst an ocean full of flying fishes:
These things seem wondrous, yet more wondrous I,
Whose heart with fear doth freeze, with love doth fry.
”
”
Thomas Weelkes
“
The boy went to his room and packed his belongings. They filled three sacks. As he was leaving, he saw, in the corner of the room, his old shepherd’s pouch. It was bunched up, and he had hardly thought of it for a long time. As he took his jacket out of the pouch, thinking to give it to someone in the street, the two stones fell to the floor. Urim and Thummim. It made the boy think of the old king, and it startled him to realize how long it had been since he had thought of him. For nearly a year, he had been working incessantly, thinking only of putting aside enough money so that he could return to Spain with pride. “Never stop dreaming,” the old king had said. “Follow the omens.” The boy picked up Urim and Thummim, and, once again, had the strange sensation that the old king was nearby. He had worked hard for a year, and the omens were that it was time to go. I’m going to go back to doing just what I did before, the boy thought. Even though the sheep didn’t teach me to speak Arabic. But the sheep had taught him something even more important: that there was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired. Tangier was no longer a strange city, and he felt that, just as he had conquered this place, he could conquer the world. “When you want something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it,” the old king had said.
”
”
Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
“
Somebody once asked me…what I most loved about living in Spain. I pondered for a bit, considering the culture, the people, the sunshine, the architecture, the music, the cities, the landscape …But I eventually came to the conclusion that the one thing I really could not do without was having my own orange trees. Apart from the beauty of those gorgeous oranges shining from amongst the deep, dark foliage, there’s the delight of idly picking one as you pass a tree, and meditatively peeling and eating it segment by segment. [from Last Days of the Bus Club, book 4 in the Driving Over Lemons Trilogy]
”
”
Chris Stewart
“
Gosvinta vuelve a sonreír, al tiempo que se pregunta por qué no ha conseguido amar con sinceridad a aquel hombre fuerte, inteligente y ardiente. Luego se recuerda la respuesta: es como ella. Nadie ama a la ambición; simplemente se posee.
”
”
José Soto Chica (El dios que habita la espada)
“
The ‘kind’ slave owners in India, or anywhere, were always the ones who had the greatest difficulty seeing the injustice of slavery. Their kindness, their generosity compared to cruel slave owners, made them blind to the unfairness of a system of slavery that they created, they maintained, and that favored them. It’s like the British bragging about the railways, the colleges, the hospitals they left us—their ‘kindness’! As though that justified robbing us of the right to self-rule for two centuries! As though we should thank them for what they stole! Would Britain or Holland or Spain or Portugal or France be what they are now without what they earned by enslaving others? During the war, the British loved telling us how well they treated us compared to how the Japanese would treat us if they invaded. But should any nation rule over another nation? Such things only happen when one group thinks the other is inferior by birth, by skin color, by history. Inferior, and therefore deserving less.
”
”
Abraham Verghese (The Covenant of Water)
“
You are not an "extra" here in Spain. It's not enough to just turn up; you have to start involving yourself - ripen from the inside out like the Raf. Only then will your time here be truly special - and the house become yours
”
”
Cherry Radford (The Spanish House: A heartwarming escapist romance novel of family secrets and love set in sunny Spain!)
“
This was one of the problems of having a thing for your neighbour; it seriously cramped your lack of style
”
”
Cherry Radford (The Spanish House: A heartwarming escapist romance novel of family secrets and love set in sunny Spain!)
“
She refuses to look at La Conquistadora, the wooden statue of the Blessed Mother tucked high and snug in an opulent niche in her chapel to the left of the altar. The conquistadors brought her from Spain, hauled her around with them like a lucky charm as they invaded the peoples of the New World, and she served as a placid, unmoved witness to the violence they wrought. No wonder the Spaniards loved her so: O Conquistadora, Our Lady of the Rosary, Blessed Mother, Adoring Mother, Our Mother of Excuses and Turning a Blind Eye, Our Lady of Willful Ignorance and Boys Will Be Boys, Our Lady of Endless, Long-Suffering Hope.
”
”
Kirstin Valdez Quade (The Five Wounds)
“
Patrick Stroud is an IT professional and an aspiring cook who attributes his love of cooking to watching hundreds of hours of the Food Network as a kid. Patrick Stroud has traveled all over the world and even lived in Spain for a period of time.
”
”
Patrick Stroud
“
It’s not that she doesn’t love them; it’s just that there is always so much to do: editing Ernest’s work, instructing the servants, restoring the house; then there were the trips with Ernest when he wanted to go quail shooting, or deep-sea fishing, or to the bullfights in Spain. She was his wife; it left little time for her to be a mother as well.
”
”
Naomi Wood (Mrs Hemingway)
“
+256752079972=== ,Death spells caster In Denmark / Sweden / Germany / spell caster, love spell, spell caster review, witchcraft, psychic, magic forum, black magic in Amsterdam, Germany, Spain, USA. Instant Revenge Death spells caster
”
”
mamazola
“
My aunt and cousins loved Buenos Aires, a glamorous city with its European-style architecture and wide avenues and cafés. My father’s side of the family hailed from Spain originally, and they came to Argentina nearly a hundred years ago, surviving a harrowing journey but ultimately making a success in the railroad industry.
”
”
Isabel Ibañez (What the River Knows (Secrets of the Nile #1))
“
Pablo Picasso entered the world howling. Seconds after he was born, one of the hospital physicians, his uncle Don Salvador, leaned down and blew a huge cloud of cigar smoke in the newborn’s face. The baby grimaced and bellowed in protest—and that’s how everyone knew he was healthy and alive. At that time, doctors were allowed to smoke in delivery rooms, but this little infant would have none of it. Even at birth, he refused to accept things as they had always been done. The baby was named Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso—whew! He was known to his friends as Pablito, a nickname meaning “little Pablo,” and he learned to draw before he could walk. His first word was piz, short for lápiz, the Spanish word for pencil. It was an instrument that would soon become his most prized possession. Pablo inherited his love of art from his father, Don José Ruiz y Blasco, a talented painter. Don José’s favorite subjects were the pigeons that flocked in the plaza outside the Picassos’ home in Málaga, a town on the southern coast of Spain. Sometimes he would allow Pablo to finish paintings for him. One of Pablo’s earliest solo artworks was a portrait of his little sister, which he painted with egg yolk. But painting was not yet his specialty. Drawing was. Pablo mostly liked to draw spirals. When people asked him why, he explained that they reminded him of churros, the fried-dough pastries sold at every streetcorner stand in Málaga. While other kids played underneath trees in the Plaza de la Merced, Pablo stood by himself scratching circles in the dirt with a stick.
”
”
David Stabler (Kid Legends: True Tales of Childhood from the Books Kid Artists, Kid Athletes, Kid Presidents, and Kid Authors)
“
The Sun Also Rises takes place mostly in Paris and a little in Spain. Tons of wine, Pernod, villagers' wine... but the food is spare like the writing: a suckling pig, a roasted chicken, shrimp, bread and olive oil. Simple food, uncomplicated tastes."
I chewed my lip. "That's it. Let's stay with simple food. Hemingway loved Spain, so let's drift toward those flavors, but no spice. And we can make them mix and match like tapas. Tyler will have flexibility."
It felt good to collaborate with Jane. We listed fruits and vegetables that we could blend into smoothies. We then listed different flours to give the meals more taste, texture, and nutrients, like the coconut and almond flours I'd used for Jane's potpies and Peter's cake. We decided to alter the egg dishes and quiches that I'd been making for her into cleaner, simpler hashes and scrambles. We developed vegetable dishes----poached, roasted, fresh and lightly seasoned.
”
”
Katherine Reay (Lizzy and Jane)
“
Jane Says"
Jane says
I'm done with Sergio
He treat me like a rag-doll
She hides
The television
Says I don't owe him nothing,
But if he come back again
Tell him, wait right here for me
Or
Try again tomorrow
I'm gonna kick tomorrow
I'm gonna kick tomorrow
She get mad
and she start to cry
She take a swing man
She can't hit
She don't mean no harm
She just don't know (Don't know, don't know)
What else to do about it
Jane says
Have you seen my wig around?
I feel naked without it
She knows
They all want her to go
But that's O.K. man
She don't like them anyway
Jane says
I'm going away to Spain
When I get my money saved
I'm gonna start tomorrow
I'm gonna kick tomorrow
I'm gonna kick tomorrow
Jane goes
To the store at 8:00
She walks up on St. Andrew's
She waits
And gets her dinner there
She pulls her dinner
From her pocket
Jane says
I ain't never been in love
I don't know what it is
She only knows if someone wants her
I wonder if they want me
I only know they want me
She gets mad
And she starts to cry
She takes a swing man
She can't hit!
She don't mean no harm
She just don't know (Don't know, don't know)
What else to do about it
Jane says
Jane says
Jane's Addiction, Jane's Addiction (1987)
”
”
Jane's Addiction (Best of Jane's Addiction)
“
He’d raised two daughters, whom he probably loved more than me, while I’d waited for him to return to Spain for over two decades. But he was never planning to come back, I now realized. He’d made a new life without us, discarding us like an old newspaper. What an idiot I’d been—religiously writing all those letters to him, sitting for hours
”
”
Lorena Hughes (The Spanish Daughter)
“
.."So you know everything now."
Julian raised an eyebrow. "I can't believe that," he drawled. "There are no more secrets, no more illicit little plots percolating in your devious mind? You'll have to forgive me if I find that hard to credit, Violette."
"Oh, there's one more secret," she said dully. "But only one, and you might as well know it. I love you. I love you so much it hurts. And I'll never love anyone else in the same way"..."There ,now," she said. That's all of it. I've tricked you and I've used you. I've lied to you, and rearranged your life to suit my own purposes. I forced you to leave Spain, and I'm the illegitimate daughter of a Penhallan and a robber baron. But I love you with my heart and soul, and I'd give my last drop of blood if you ever needed it." ..."But of course you won't ever need it, so I'll go now. And you need never fear that our paths will cross again." Turning from him, she began to walk back across the sand.
"You omitted to mention puking all over my boots in that catalog of wrongs," Julian said.
..."I suppose you're entitled to that," she said. "Entitled to mock. Why should you believe in my love? Anyway, it's a poor thing. I know it can't excuse or make up what I've done to you."
"Dear God," he said. "I'm assuming this extraordinary show of humility was brought on by that drug Penhallan gave you. I trust it's effect isn't permanent."
..."Oh you despicable bastard! You are an unmitigated cur!" She swooped down, grabbed a handful of sand, and threw it at him. Darting sideways, she picked up the empty cognac bottle. It flew through the air and caught him a glancing blow on the shoulder...
... Diabillo ! Virago! Termagant!" Julian taunted, grinning as he ducked one of Gabriel's boots.
"Espadachin! Brute! Bully! Unchivalrous pig!" she hurled back..
...He'd fought the knowledge ..he'd been fighting it for weeks..and now he'd lost the battle. She was a lawless, manipulative, illegitimate half-breed, no possible wife for a St Simon, and he didn't give a damn.
”
”
Jane Feather
“
Raymond of Poitiers was the son of William IX the Troubadour, duke of Aquitaine, who had campaigned against the Muslims in Spain, bringing back from al-Andalus the knightly poets and enslaved dancer-singers who helped promote a fashion for courtly love, sung in French by singer-songwriter-knights – the troubadours. William personified the cult of love, devoting himself to his beautiful mistress, the wondrously named Dangereuse de l’Isle Bouchard, who was the grandmother of Eleanor of Aquitaine.
”
”
Simon Sebag Montefiore (The World: A Family History of Humanity)
“
Would Britain or Holland or Spain or Portugal or France be what they are now without what they earned by enslaving others? During the war, the British loved telling us how well they treated us compared to how the Japanese would treat us if they invaded.
”
”
Abraham Verghese (The Covenant of Water)