Sputnik Quotes

Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?

I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do.

I have this strange feeling that I'm not myself anymore. It's hard to put into words, but I guess it's like I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling.

Sometimes I feel so- I don’t know - lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything you’re used to has been ripped away. Like there’s no more gravity, and I’m left to drift in outer space with no idea where I’m going’ Like a little lost Sputnik?’ I guess so.

The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.

Of course it hurt that we could never love each other in a physical way. We would have been far more happy if we had. But that was like the tides, the change of seasons--something immutable, an immovable destiny we could never alter. No matter how cleverly we might shelter it, our delicate friendship wasn't going to last forever. We were bound to reach a dead end. That was painfully clear.

We're both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We're connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me.

And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.

In dreams you don't need to make any distinctions between things. Not at all. Boundaries don't exist. So in dreams there are hardly ever collisions. Even if there are, they don't hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites. Reality, reality.

Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world?

If they invent a car that runs on stupid jokes, you could go far.

So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us--that's snatched right out of our hands--even if we are left completely changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to the end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness.

In the world we live in, what we know and what we don't know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion.

Maybe it's just hiding somewhere. Or gone on a trip to come home. But falling in love is always a pretty crazy thing. It might appear out of the blue and just grab you. Who knows — maybe even tomorrow.

We each have a special something we can get only at a special time of our life. like a small flame. A careful, fortunate few cherish that flame, nurture it, hold it as a torch to light their way. But once that flame goes out, it’s gone forever.

There weren't any curtains in the windows, and the books that didn't fit into the bookshelf lay piled on the floor like a bunch of intellectual refugees.

Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even its imperfection.

I began to draw an invisible boundary between myself and other people. No matter who I was dealing with. I maintained a set distance, carefully monitoring the person’s attitude so that they wouldn’t get any closer. I didn’t easily swallow what other people told me. My only passions were books and music

I closed my eyes and listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik, even now circling the earth, gravity their only tie to the planet. Lonely metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet, pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words passing between them. No promises to keep.

Understanding is but the sum of misunderstandings.

Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?

No mistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red; I'm in love. And this love is about to carry me off somewhere. The current's too overpowering; I don't have any choice. It may very well be a special place, some place I've never seen before. Danger may be lurking there, something that may end up wounding me deeply, fatally. I might end up losing everything. But there's no turning back. I can only go with the flow. Even if it means I'll be burned up, gone forever.

Instead of things I'm good at, it might be faster to list the things I can't do. I can't cook or clean the house. My room's a mess, and I'm always losing things. I love music, but I can't sing a note. I'm clumsy and can barely sew a stitch. My sense of direction is the pits, and I can't tell left from right half the time. When I get angry, I tend to break things. Plates and pencils, alarm clocks. Later on I regret it, but at the time I can't help myself. I have no money in the bank. I'm bashful for no reason, and I have hardly any friends to speak of.

I feel like I've swallowed a cloudy sky

Like you're riding a train at night across some vast plain, and you catch a glimpse of a tiny light in a window of a farmhouse. In an instant it's sucked back into the darkness behind and vanishes. But if you close your eyes, that point of light stays with you, just barely for a few moments.

After all this, I won't start to hate you.

In the end, like so many beautiful promises in our lives, that dinner date never came to be.

Did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding?

You know what I'd really like to do the most right now? Climb up to the top of some high place like the pyramids. The highest place I can find. Where you can see forever. Stand on the very top, look all around the world, see all the scenery, and see with my own eyes what's been lost from the world.

In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life.

Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life and it’d lose even its imperfection.

When something bothered me, I didn’t talk with anyone about it. I thought it over all by myself, came to a conclusion, and took action alone. Not that I really felt lonely. I thought that’s just the way things are. Human beings, in the final analysis, have to survive on their own.

No matter what form the relationship might take, he was the only person she could picture sharing her life with.

I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do. To dream, to live in the world of dreams. But it doesn’t last forever. Wakefulness always comes to take me back.

So that’s how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us - that's snatched right out of our hands - even if we are left completely changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to the end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of insurmountable emptiness... Maybe, in some distant place, everything is already, quietly, lost. Or at least there exists a silent place where everything can disappear, melting together in a single, overlapping figure. And as we live our lives we discover - drawing toward us the thin threads attached to each - what has been lost. I closed my eyes and tried to bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing them closer, holding on to them. Knowing all the while that their lives are fleeting.

Writing novels is much the same. You gather up bones and make your gate, but no matter how wonderful the gate might be, that alone doesn't make it a living breathing novel. A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.

That's gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way.

Sometimes you’re just the sweetest thing. Like Christmas, summer vacation, and a brand-new puppy rolled into one.

If she did experience sex--or something close to it--in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.

It is the same with anything - you have to learn through your own experience, paying your own way. You can't learn it from a book.

The world in books seemed so much more alive to me than anything outside. I could see things I'd never seen before. Books and music were my best friends. I had a couple of good friends at school, but never met anyone I could really speak my heart to. We'd just make small talk, play soccer together. When something bothered me, I didn't talk with anyone about it. I thought it over all by myself, came to a conclusion, and took action alone. Not that I really felt lonely. I thought that's just the way things are. Human beings, in the final analysis, have to survive on their own.

Who can really distinguish between the sea and what's reflected in it? Or tell the difference between the falling rain and loneliness?

I understand what you mean by precarious. Sometimes I feel so- I don't know- lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything you're used to has been ripped away. Like there's no more gravity, and I'm left to drift in outer space. With no idea where I'm headed.

You’re optimistic one moment, only to be racked the next by the certainty that it will all fall to pieces. And in the end it does.

Her voice was like a line from an old black-and-white Jean-Luc Godard movie, filtering in just beyond the frame of my consciousness.

This kind of thing doesn't seem to bother most people. Given the chance, people are surprisingly frank when they talk about themselves. "I'm honest and open to a ridiculous degree," they'll say, or "I'm thin-skinned and not the type who gets along easily in the world." Or "I am very good at sensing others' true feelings." But any number of times I've seen people who say they're easily hurt hurt other people for no apparent reason. Self-styled honest and open people, without realizing what they're doing, blithely use some self-serving excuse to get what they want. And those "good at sensing others' true feelings" are duped by the most transparent flattery. It's enough to make me ask the question: How well do we really know ourselves?

Imagine The Greatest Hits of Bobby Darin minus 'Mack the Knife.' That's what my life would be like without you.

An empty shell. Those were the first words that sprang to mind. .... Something incredibly important - .. - had disappeared from Miu for good. Leaving behind not life, but its absence

I think most people live in fiction...That's how you keep your fragile body intact.

What's really important here," I whispered loudly to myself,"is not the big things other people have thought up, but the small things you, yourself have

Judging the mistakes of strangers is an easy thing to do - and it feels pretty good.

It made her think of Laika, the dog. The man-made satellite streaking soundlessly across the blackness of outer space. The dark, lustrous eyes of the dog gazing out of the tiny window. In the infinite loneliness of space, what could Laika possibly be looking at?

The world in books seemed so much more alive to me than anything outside. I could see things I'd never seen before. Books and music were my best friends. I had a couple of good friends at school, but never met anyone I could really speak my heart to.

Do you know what ‘Sputnik’ means in Russian? ‘Travelling companion’. I looked it up in a dictionary not long ago. Kind of a strange coincidence if you think about it. I wonder why the Russians gave their satellite that strange name. It’s just a poor little lump of metal, spinning around the Earth.

But falling in love is always a pretty crazy thing. It might appear out of the blue and just grab you. Who knows—maybe even tomorrow.

When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.

What's nurtured slowly grows well.

I must be in love with this woman, Sumire realized with a start. No mistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red; I'm in love. And this love is about to carry me off somewhere. This current's too overpowering; I don't have any choice. It may very well be a special place, some place I've never seen before. Danger may be lurking there, something that may end up wounding me deeply, fatally. I might end up losing everything. But there's no turning back. I can only go with the flow. Even if it means I'll be burned up, gone forever.

Ever since that happened to me, I haven't been able to give myself to anyone in this world.

Isn't life strange? There are people who have so many leftover clothes they can't stuff them all in their wardrobe. And then there are people like me, whose socks never match.

The world’s crawling with stupid, innocent girls, and I’m just one of them, self-consciously chasing after dreams that will never come true.

But the silence spoke volumes.

I'm always tripped up by the eternal who am I?

A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.

Sometimes you’re just the sweetest thing. Like Christmas, summer holidays and a brand-new puppy all rolled into one.

The Earth, after all, doesn’t creak and groan its way around the sun just so human beings can have a good time and a bit of a laugh.

Lonely metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet, pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words passing between them. No promises to keep.

In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains—flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornado’s intensity doesn’t abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and everything, transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an exotic fortress city under a sea of sand. In short, a love of truly monumental proportions. The person she fell in love with happened to be 17 years older than Sumire. And was married. And, I should add, was a woman. This is where it all began, and where it all ended. Almost.

Any explanation or logic that explains everything so easily has a hidden trap in it. I'm speaking from experience. Somebody once said if it's something a single book can explain, it's not worth having explained. What I mean is don't leap to any conclusions.

Reality was one step out of line, a cardigan with the buttons done up wrong.

And I really wanted to see you, too," she said. "When I couldn’t see you any more, I realized that. It was as clear as if the planets all of a sudden lined up in a row for me. I really need you. You’re a part of me; I’m a part of you.

Being all alone is like the feeling you get when you stand at the mouth of a large river on a rainy evening and watch the water flow into the sea. Have you ever done that? Stand at the mouth of a large river and watch the water flow into the sea?

Irrepressible curiosity vied with an instinctive fear.

An expectation was there, mixed in with so many other emotions - excitement, resignation, hesitation, confusion, fear - that would well up then wither on the vine. You're optimistic one moment, only to be racked the next by the certainty that it will all fall to pieces. And in the end it does.

But tomorrow I'll be a different person, never again the person I was. Not that anyone will notice after I'm back in Japan. On the outside nothing will be different. But something inside has burned up and vanished. Blood has been shed, and something inside me is gone. Head down, without a word, that something makes its exit. The door opens; the door shuts. The light goes out. This is the last day for the person I am right now. The very last twilight. When dawn comes, the person I am won't be here anymore. Someone else will occupy this body.

I have these realistic dreams and snap wide awake in the middle of the night. And for a while I can't work out what's real and what isn't... That kind of feeling. Do you have any idea what I'm saying?

My platitudes don't hold their interest and I can hardly blame them for that. My real stories are all out of date. So what if I can speak firsthand about the Spanish flu, the advent of the automobile, world wars, cold wars, guerrilla wars, and Sputnik — that's all ancient history now. But what else do I have to offer? Nothing happens to me anymore. That's the reality of getting old, and I guess that's really the crux of the matter. I'm not ready to be old yet.

If people aren’t equal, where would you fit in?

Not prejudging things, listening to what's going on, keeping your ears, heart, and mind open.

I spend more time being confused than not,” I answered.

If I'm going to merely ramble, maybe I should just snuggle under the warm covers, think of Miu, and play with myself.

Any explanation or logic that explains everything so easily has a hidden trap in it.

Like the sound of a velvet curtain being drawn aside on a peaceful morning to let sunlight wake someone very special to you.

Every story has a time to be told, I convinced her. Otherwise you'll be forever a prisoner to the secret inside you.

Problem is, once I sit at my desk and put all these down on paper. I realize something vital is missing. It doesn't crystallize - no crystals, just pebbles. And I'm not transported anywhere.

I’m not asking for sympathy, but it would be nice if you could give me a bit more in the way of a response. Other than those cold interjections of yours—ohs and ums. How about a conjunction? A conjunction would be nice. A yet or a but.

I really wanted to see you,” I said. “And I really wanted to see you, too,” she said. “When I couldn’t see you any more, I realized that. It was as clear as if the planets all of a sudden lined up in a row for me. I really need you. You’re a part of me; I’m a part of you. You know, somewhere—I’m not at all sure where—I think I cut something’s throat. Sharpening my knife, my heart a stone.

In the instant Miu touched her hair, Sumire fell in love, like she was crossing a field and bang! a bolt of lightning zapped her right in the head. Something akin to an artistic revelation.

I was alive in the past, and I’m alive now, sitting here talking to you. But what you see here isn’t really me. This is just a shadow of who I was. You are really living. But I’m not. Even these words I’m saying right now sound empty, like an echo.

She was short, and even in a good mood she talked like she was half a step away from picking a fight.

My head is like some ridiculous barn packed full of stuff I want to write about.

Defining that special something isn't easy, but when you gazed into her eyes, you could always find it, reflected deep down inside.

Whenever she came across lines she liked, she'd mark them in pencil and commit them to memory as if they were Holy Writ.

I love music, but I can't sing a note.

لماذا على الناس أن يكونوا وحيدين هكذا؟

But before a computer became an inanimate object, and before Mission Control landed in Houston; before Sputnik changed the course of history, and before the NACA became NASA; before the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka established that separate was in fact not equal, and before the poetry of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech rang out over the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Langley’s West Computers were helping America dominate aeronautics, space research, and computer technology, carving out a place for themselves as female mathematicians who were also black, black mathematicians who were also female.

Maybe in some distant place, everything is already, quietly, lost. Or at least there exists a silent place where everything can disappear. Or at least there exists a silent place where everything can disappear, melting together in a single overlapping figure. And as we live our lives we discover—drawing toward us the thin threads attached to each—what has been lost.

And so now, having been born, I'm going to rewind the film, so that my pink blanket flies off, my crib scoots across the floor as my umbilical cord reattaches, and I cry out as I'm sucked back between my mother's legs. She gets really fat again. Then back some more as a spoon stops swinging and a thermometer goes back into its velvet case. Sputnik chases its rocket trail back to the launching pad and polio stalks the land. There's a quick shot of my father as a twenty-year-old clarinetist, playing an Artie Shaw number into the phone, and then he's in church, age eight, being scandalized by the price of candles; and next my grandfather is untaping his first U.S. dollar bill over a cash register in 1931. Then we're out of America completely; we're in the middle of the ocean, the sound track sounding funny in reverse. A steamship appears, and up on a deck a lifeboat is curiously rocking; but then the boat docks, stern first, and we're up on dry land again, where the film unspools, back at the beginning...

She came to her own private conclusion, which she tucked away in a drawer, and silently went back to her meal.

What's important is being attentive. Staying calm, being alert to things around you.

بدا العالم في الكتب أكثر حيوية من أي شيء في الخارج

Alan shrugged. “I love the CBC, really, but being voted its president—” “Co-president,” Sputnik corrected. “—is kind of like being declared King of Nerds.” “Co-king,” Sputnik asserted.

There's not much you can do about time - it just keeps on passing. But experience? Don't tell me that. I'm not proud of it, but I don't have any sexual desire. And what sort of experience can a writer have if she doesn't feel passion? It'd be like a chef without an appetite.

Everybody’s got something weird about them.

Mărunțișurile pe care le gândești cu propria-ți minte sunt mai importante decât marile idei emise de alții.

There's not much you can do about time - it just keeps on passing.

Unless you find the fundamental cause and treat that, the same problem will surface later on in a different form.

أحلم، أحيانا أشعر أن هذا الشيء الوحيد الصحيح الذي يمكن عمله.

كانت الأضواء في الحي كلها مطفأة والشوارع مهجورة. لا ريح ولا صوت أمواج، فقط ضوء قمر يغسل الأرض.

My only passions were books and music. As you might guess, I led a lonely life.

As Pushkin put it: He had no itch to dig for glories deep in the dirt that time has laid.

I find it hard to talk about myself. I'm always tripped up by the eternal who am I? paradox. Sure, no one knows as much pure data about me as me. But when I talk about myself, all sorts of other factors--values, standards, my own limitations as an observer--make me, the narrator, select and eliminate things about me, the narratee. I've always been disturbed by the thought that I'm not painting a very objective picture of myself. This kind of thing doesn't seem to bother most people. Given the chance, people are surprisingly frank when they talk about themselves. "I'm honest and open to a ridiculous degree," they'll say, or "I'm thin-skinned and not the type who gets along easily in the world." Or "I am very good at sensing others' true feelings." But any number of times I've seen people who say they've easily hurt other people for no apparent reason. Self-styled honest and open people, without realizing what they're doing, blithely use some self-serving excuse to get what they want. And those "good at sensing others' true feelings" are duped by the most transparent flattery. It's enough to make me ask the question: How well do we really know ourselves? The more I think about it, the more I'd like to take a rain check on the topic of me. What I'd like to know more about is the objective reality of things outside myself. How important the world outside is to me, how I maintain a sense of equilibrium by coming to terms with it. That's how I'd grasp a clearer sense of who I am.

I dream, sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do.

The kind of helpless feeling when everything you're used to has been ripped away. Like there's no more gravity, and I'm left to drift in outer space with no idea where I'm going.

We're both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We'e connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it toward me.

أحيانا أشعر أن جسدي يختفي كما لو يمكنك أن ترى من خلاله، لن تفهم ما أحاول أن أقوله

أعرف الخطأ، لكن ما هو الصواب؟

يشبه كوني وحيدا الشعور الذي ينتابك حين تقف على مصب نهر وتراقب المياه تتدفق في البحر، هل سبق لك وأن فعلت ذلك؟

بالكتابة أجدد إثبات وجودي يوميا

لا ينبغي للمرء أن يعيش دون أن يمر بالتجربة الصحية للعيش في البراري حتى لو في وحدة مملة، حيث يجد نفسه معتمدا على نفسه فقط، وبذلك يتعرف على قوته الخفية والحقيقية

Tell me,” said Sumire, “have you ever felt confused about what you’re doing, like it’s not right?” “I spend more time being confused than not,” I answered.

Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even it's imperfection.

Pero, si se me permite formular una anodina teoria general, en nuestra vida imperfecta las cosas inutiles son, en cierta medida, necesarias.

Understanding is but the sum of our misunderstandings.

You have to love someone to yell at them so intensely; you have to care so unbelievably much that your anger explodes and burns across the sky like the Soviet's Sputnik.

It was hard to accept that she had almost no feelings, maybe none at all, for me as a man. This hurt so bad at times it felt like someone was gouging out my guts with a knife. Still, the time I spent with her was more precious than anything.

And most likely, that was the future in a nutshell, Sumire growing ever more distant. It made me sad. I felt like I was a meaningless bug clinging for no special reason to a high stone wall on a windy night, with no plans, no beliefs. Sumire said she missed me. But she had Miu beside her. I had no one. all I had was-me. Same as always.

The world’s crawling with stupid, innocent girls, and I’m just one of them, self-consciously chasing after dreams that’ll never come true. I should shut the piano lid and come down off the stage. Before it’s too late.

So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us--that's snatched right out of our hands--even if we are left completely changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence.

Act that way and slowly but surely I will fade away. All the dawns and all the twilights will rob me, piece by piece, of myself, and before long my very life will be shaved away completely - and I would end up nothing.

Lady, did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding?” This film came out at the height of the Vietnam War. I love that line. That’s gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way. And bleeding. Shooting and bleeding.

Being tough isn’t in and of itself a bad thing. Looking back on it, though, I can see I was too used to being strong, and never tried to understand those who were weak. I was too used to being fortunate, and didn’t try to understand those less fortunate. Too used to being healthy, and didn’t try to understand the pain of those who weren’t. Whenever I saw a person in trouble, somebody paralyzed by events, I decided it was entirely his fault––he just wasn’t trying hard enough. People who complained were just plain lazy. My outlook on life was unshakable, and practical, but lacked any human warmth. And not a single person around me pointed this out.’” - Miu

I think it was the right move, but if I can be allowed a mediocre generalization, don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even its imperfection.

He wasn’t a talkative man to begin with, and in all aspects of life—as though it were a kind of mouth infection he wanted to avoid catching—he never talked about his feelings.

Devouring books came as naturally to us as breathing.

في الأحلام يندر التصادم، حتى لو وجد فإنه لا يسبب الألم

Sometimes you’re just the sweetest thing. Like Christmas, summer holidays and a brand-new puppy all rolled into one.

She hadn't been hurt in any real way, had she? No one had treated her badly. I must just be overly sensitive to things, she convinced herself.

Everybody’s got something weird about them,” I said.

On the flip side of everything we think we absolutely have pegged lurks an equal amount of the unknown. Understanding is but the sum of our misunderstandings.

The blood must have already, in its own silent way, seeped inside.

Dentro de mi, alguien, algo, se irá. Con la mirada baja, sin una palabra.

A percepção não passa da soma dos nossos mal-entendidos.

We used to spend hours talking. We never got tired of talking, never raun out of topics - novels, the world, scenery, language. Our conversations were more open and intimate than ane lovers'.

What season?” I asked. “A delayed adolescence, I guess. When I get up in the morning and see my face in the mirror, it looks like someone else’s. If I’m not careful, I might end up left behind.

Way back when the Sam Peckinpah film The Wild Bunch premiered, a woman journalist raised her hand at the press conference and asked the following: “Why in the world do you have to show so much blood all over the place?” She was pretty worked up about it. One of the actors, Ernest Borgnine, looked a bit perplexed and fielded the question. “Lady, did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding?” This film came out at the height of the Vietnam War. I love that line. That’s gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way. And bleeding. Shooting and bleeding.

When did my youth slip away from me? I suddenly thought. It was over, wasn't it? Seemed just like yesterday I was still only half grown up. Huey Lewis and the News had a couple of hit songs then. Not so many years ago. And now here I was, inside a closed circuit, spinning my wheels. Knowing I wasn't getting anywhere but spinning just the same. I had to. Had to keep that up or I wouldn't be able to survive.

Maybe it’s just hiding somewhere. Or gone on a trip and forgotten to come home. But falling in love is always a pretty crazy thing. It might appear out of the blue and just grab you. Who knows—maybe even tomorrow.

A question. So what are people supposed to do if they want to avoid a collision (thud!) but still lie in the field, enjoying the clouds drifting by, listening to the grass grow—not thinking, in other words? Sound hard? Not at all. Logically, it’s easy. C’est simple. The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams, and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time. In dreams you don’t need to make any distinctions between things. Not at all. Boundaries don’t exist. So in dreams there are hardly any collisions. Even if there are, they don’t hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites. Reality, reality.

Porque será que estamos condenados a ser assim tão solitários? Qual a razão de tudo isto? Há tanta gente, tanta gente neste mundo, todos à espera de qualquer coisa uns dos outros e, contudo, todos irremediavelmente afastados. Porquê? Continuará a Terra a girar unicamente para alimentar a solidão dos homens?

Aquilo que os nossos olhos vêem nem sempre corresponde à realidade.

I had no idea what to say. A silence descended on us as sudden as the instant fresh oil is poured into a large frying pan.

لا شيء يفرح القلب على مستوى البصر

A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.

والداي ليسا من النوع الذي يتبني أحد، على اي حال، لم أقدر على تقبل حقيقة أني على صلة دم بهؤلاء، كان اسهل علىّ التفكير أنهم غرباء تماما

هل سبق أن رأيت من أُطلق عليه الرصاص ولم ينزف دما؟

الخطر كامن هناك، قد ينتهي بي الأمر إلى جرح عميق قاتل، قد أخسر كل شيء في النهاية، لكن لا رجعة الآن، لا يسعني إلا السير مع التيار، حتى لو عنى ذبك أني سأحترق حقا، وأذوي إلى الأبد

ما يُرعى ببطء، ينمو جيدا

لو كان باستطاعتها إطلاق لحية.. أنا متأكد أنها ستفعل !

أليس هناك مكان أيضا للأشياء التافهة في هذا العالم البعيد عن الكمال؟ إذا تم التخلص من كل الأشياء التافهة في الحياة غير المثالية، فقد تفقد الحياة عدم كمالها

Xét cho cùng Trái đất không hoàn thành quãng đường nặng nề vất vả vòng quanh mặt trời của nó chỉ để cho con người có thể có được khoảng thời gian tốt đẹp và chút vui thú.

It was far too hot to think about complicated matters.

I was attracted to her from the first time we talked, and soon there was no turning back. For a long time she was the only thing I could think about. I tried to tell her how I felt, but somehow the feelings and the right words couldn’t connect. Maybe it was for the best.

‏ليس بإمكاني التخلص من شكوكي السوداء القديمة المألوفة. ألا أصرف كل وقتي وطاقتي سعي عديم الفائدة؟ حاملة دلو ماء سائرة إلى الموضع يكاد أن يغمره السيل؟ ألا ينبغي أن أتخلى عن جهوي و أنساب مع التيار؟

Sumire was a hopeless romantic, a bit set in her ways - innocent of the ways of the world, to put a nice spin on it. Start her talking and she'd go on nonstop, but if she was with someone she didn't get along with - most people in the world, in other words - she barely opened her mouth. She smoked too much, and you could count on her to lose her ticket every time she took the train. She'd get so engrossed in her thoughts at times she'd forget to eat, and she was as thin as one of those war orphans in an old Italian film - like a stick with eyes. I'd love to show you a photo of her but I don't have any. She hated having her photograph taken - no desire to leave behind for posterity a Portrait of the Artist as a Young (Wo)Man.

No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength.

كنت حية في الماضي، و أنا حية الآن، أجلس هنا أتحدث معك.لكن ماترينه هنا ليس أنا الحقيقية. إنه مجرد ظل لما كنت عليه. أنت تعيشين حقًا ، أما أنا فلا أعيش. و حتى هذه الكلمات التي أقولها الآن تبدو فاغة كصدى.

And it came to me then. That we were wonderful travelling companions, but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal on their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere

Mas, vendo bem, e se me é permitido um lugar-comum corriqueiro, não será que até as coisas inúteis têm cabimento neste mundo longe-de-ser-perfeito? Se desta vida imperfeita eliminássemos tudo o que é inútil, a imperfeição deixaria ela própria de fazer sentido.

هكذا نعيش حياتنا مهما كان عمق وخطورة الخسارة، ومهما كانت أهمية ما يسرق منا، الذي يخطف مباشرة من بين ايدينا، حتى لو تُركنا كبشر متغيرين ولم يبق لنا مما كان قبلا سوى طبقة من البشرة الخارجية، فإننا نشتمر في العيش على هذه الطريقة، بصمت. ندنو كثيرا من الوقت المخصص لنا، نودعه أثناء جرجرته خلفنا، مكررين، وغالبا ببراعة، أعمال نفس الحياة اليومية غير المتناهية، مخلفين شعور بفراغ غير قابل للقياس.

Ya ves, continuamos viviendo, cada uno a su manera [...]. Por profunda y fatal que sea la pérdida, por importante que sea lo que nos han arrancado de las manos, aunque nos hayamos convertido en alguien completamente distinto y sólo conservemos, de lo que antes éramos, una fina capa de piel, a pesar de todo, podemos continuar viviendo, así, en silencio. Podemos alargar la mano e ir tirando del hielo de los días que nos han destinado, ir dejándolos atrás. En forma de trabajo rutinario, el trabajo de todos los días [...]. Al pensarlo, me sentí terriblemente vacío.

I never had a cat again. I still like cats, though I decided at the time that that poor little cat who climbed the tree and never returned would be my first and last cat. I couldn’t forget that little cat and start loving another.

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, my parents, like the rest of America, were terrified. The Soviets had nuclear weapons and now were ahead of us in space. So my parents marched me and Owen into our living room, sat us down, and said, " You boys are going to study math and Science so we can beat the Soviets!" I thought that was a lot of pressure to put on a six-year old. But own and I were obedient sons, so we studied math and science. And we were good at it.. Owen was the first in our family to go to college. He went to MIT, graduating with a degree in physics, and then became a photographer. I went to Harvard, and became a comedian. My poor parents. But we still beat the Soviets. You're welcome.

Our life here was just a momentary illusion, and someday reality would yank us back to the world we came from.

He had no itch to dig for glories Deep in the dirt that time has laid.

Sumire frowned and sighed. “If they invent a car that runs on stupid jokes, you could go far.

Lo correcto", ¿qué diablos significa eso? ¿Me lo puedes explicar? A decir verdad, no sé muy bien qué es "lo correcto". Lo que no es correcto sí lo sé, pero "lo correcto", ¿qué es?

Okay, consider this. Say you’re going to go on a long journey with someone by car. And the two of you will take turns driving. Which type of person would you choose? One who’s a good driver, but inattentive, or an attentive person who’s not such a good driver?

By and large, the kind of science fiction which makes tomorrow's headlines as near as this morning's coffee has enlarged popular awareness of the modern, miraculous world of science we live in. It has helped generations of young people feel at age with a changing world. But fashions change, old loves return, and now that Sputniks clutter up the sky with new and unfamiliar moons, the readers of science fiction are willing to wait to read tomorrow's headlines. Once again, I think, there is a place, a wish, a need for the wonder and color of the world way out. The world beyond the stars. The world we won't live to see. That is why I wrote The Door Through Space.

Astrud Gilberto sang an old bossa nova song. “Take me to Aruanda,” she sang. I closed my eyes, and the clatter of the cups and saucers sounded like the roar of a far-off sea. Aruanda—what’s it like there?

I watch these kids. They don't seem entirely unhappy. A few times I've even circled the Free Clinic on foot, trying to catch a closer glimpse of these kids and their lives as they pop in and out of the clinic's Sputnik-era, gone-to-seed building--Lancaster's future trolls and Popeyes loitering out back having hushed paranoid conversations. And once I even went to have a look where they hang out in a big way, out in the delivery bay behind the now-closed Donut Hut, the delivery bay grotto out back with a floor spongy with pigeon shit, chewing gum, cigarette ashes, and throat oysters--dank and sunless. I went to visit this place once when all the druggies were away, having their druggy lives downtown doing their druggy things: yelling at parked cars and having conversations with amber lights. I visited this place and I was confused: confused and attracted. Who do these people think they are? How can they not care about the future or hot running water or clean sheets or cable TV? These people. And on the walls down at the delivery bay, do you know what they had written? Written in letters several hands high, letters built of IV needles attached to the cement with soiled bandages and wads of chewing gum? They had written the words WE LIKE IT.

Por profunda y fatal que sea la pérdida, por importante que sea lo que nos han arrancado de las manos, aunque nos hayamos convertido en alguien completamente distinto y sólo conservemos, de lo que antes éramos, una fina capa de piel, a pesar de todo, podemos continuar viviendo, así, en silencio.

We each have a special something we can get only at a special time of our life. Like a small flame. A careful, fortunate few cherish that flame, nurture it, hold it as a torch to light their way. But once that flame goes out, it’s gone forever. What I’d lost was not just Sumire. I’d lost that precious flame.

When I was younger all kinds of people talked to me,” she said. “Told me all sorts of things. Fascinating stories, beautiful, strange stories. But past a certain point nobody talked to me any more. No one. Not my husband, my child, my friends … no one. Like there was nothing left in the world to talk about. Sometimes I feel like my body’s turning invisible, like you can see right through me.

‏ما الذي على الناس فعله إذا أرادو تجنب التصادم و الاستمرار في الاستلقاء في الحقل مستمتعين بالسحب الهائمة ويصغون إلى نمو الأعشاب- أي لايفكرون؟ ‏الأمر سهل، الجواب هو الأحلام. الاستمرار فيها. الدخول وعدم الخروج أبداً. العيش فيها ما تبقى من العمر. ليس عليك التمييز بين الأشياء بتاتاً. ‏لا وجود للحدود، لذا في الأحلام يندر التصادم. حتى لو وجد، فإنه لا يسبب الألم. الواقع مختلف. الواقع يلسع. الواقع، الواقع.

I get up out of bed. I pull back the old, faded curtain and open the window. I stick my head out and look up at the sky. Sure enough, a mouldy-coloured half-moon hangs in the sky. Good. We’re both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We’re connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me.

Für jeden von uns gibt es etwas ganz Besonderes, das sich ihm nur in einem bestimmten Augenblick als schwache kleine Flamme darbietet. Einige achtsame, vom Glück begünstigte Menschen hegen diese Flamme, bis sie groß genug ist, um ihnen wie eine Fackel den Lebensweg zu erhellen. Erlischt diese Flamme jedoch, können wir sie nie wieder entzünden.

My husband and I see each other only on weekends, and generally get along well. We're like good friends, life partners able to spend some pleasant time together. We talk about all sorts of things, and we trust each other implicitly. Where and how he has a sex life I don't know,and I don't really care. We never make love, though -- never even touch each other. I feel bad about it, but I don't want to touch him. I just don't want to.

There we were, sitting quietly on the edge of the world, and no one could see us. I just wanted to stay this way forever. I knew that was impossible – our life here was just a momentary illusion, and someday reality would yank us back to the world we came from.

I turned faceup on the slab of stone, gazed at the sky, and thought about all the man-made satellites spinning around the earth. The horizon was still etched in a faint glow, and stars began to blink on in the deep, wine-colored sky. I gazed among them for the light of a satellite, but it was still too bright out to spot one with the naked eye. The sprinkling of the stars looked nailed to the spot, unmoving. I closed my eyes and listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik, even now circling the earth, gravity their only tie to the planet. Lonely metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet, pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words passing between them. No promises to keep.

All over again I understood how important, how irreplaceable, Sumire was to me. In her own special way she’d kept me tethered to the world. As I talked to her and read her stories, my mind quietly expanded, and I could see things I’d never seen before. Without even trying, we grew close. Like a pair of young lovers undressing in front of each other, Sumire and I had exposed our hearts to one another, an experience I’d never have with anyone else, anywhere. We cherished what we had together, though we never put into words how very precious it was. Of course it hurt that we could never love each other in a physical way. We would have been far happier if we had. But that was like the tides, the change of seasons—something immutable, an immovable destiny we could never alter. No matter how cleverly we might shelter it, our delicate friendship wasn’t going to last for ever. We were bound to reach a dead end. That was painfully clear. I loved Sumire more than anyone else and wanted her more than anything in the world. And I couldn’t just shelve those feelings, for there was nothing to take their place. I dreamed that someday there’d be a sudden, major transformation. Even if the chances of it coming true were slim, I could dream about it, couldn’t I? But I knew it would never come true.

Le storie che si scriveranno, i quadri che dipingeranno, le musiche che si comporranno, le stolte pazze e incomprensibili cose che tu dici, saranno pur sempre la punta massima dell'uomo, la sua autentica bandiera [...] quelle idiozie che tu dici saranno ancora la cosa che più ci distingue dalle bestie, non importa se supremamente inutili, forse anzi proprio per questo. Più ancora dell'atomica, dello sputnik, dei razzi intersiderali. E il giorno in cui quelle idiozie non si faranno più, gli uomini saranno diventati dei nudi miserabili vermi come ai tempi delle caverne.

Hace tiempo, cuando se estrenó Grupo salvaje, de Sam Peckinpah, en la rueda de prensa una periodista alzó la mano y preguntó en tono inquisitivo: «¿Qué necesidad creen que hay en mostrar tanta sangre?». Ernest Borgnine, uno de los actores, respondió con aire perplejó: «Pero, señora, es que, cuando te disparan, sangras». La película se filmó en plena época de la guerra del Vietnam. Me gusta esta frase. Posiblemente sea uno de los principios básicos de la realidad. Aceptar las cosas difíciles de desentrañar como cosas difíciles de desentrañar, aceptar el hecho de sangrar. Disparar y sangrar. Es que, cuando te disparan, sangras.

O sentimento era de esperança, misturado com uma série de outras emoções - excitação, resignação, confusão, medo -, e tanto interrompia de repente como acabava por esmorecer. Como quando somos arrebatados por um súbito optimismo, para logo a seguir termos a certeza de que tudo irá acabar mal. E é quase sempre o que acaba por acontecer.

E assim prosseguimos com as nossas vidas, cada um para seu lado. Por mais profunda e fatal que seja a perda, por mais importante que seja aquilo que a vida nos roubou – arrebatando-o das nossas mãos -, e ainda que nos tenhamos convertido em pessoas completamente diferentes, conservando apenas a mesma fina camada exterior de pele, apesar de tudo isso continuamos a viver as nossas vidas, assim, em silêncio, estendendo a mão para chegar ao fio dos dias que nos coube em sorte, para logo o deixarmos irremediavelmente para trás. Repetindo, muitas vezes, de forma particularmente hábil, o trabalho de todos os dias, deixando na nossa esteira um sentimento de um incomensurável vazio.

In those days, this was years for the sputnik thing, it was customary to downgrade the Russians' science. People who know something about those things didn't make that mistake. But at the level of Time magazine the joke was how they copied everything and claimed it for their own. Well, of course the corollary of that is that it's our bomb they have and that means we were betrayed. After the war our whole foreign policy depended on our having the bomb and the Soviets not having it. It was a terrible miscalculation. It militarized the world. And when they got it the only alternative to admitting our bankruptcy of leadership and national vision was to find conspiracies. It was one or the other.

My head is like some ridiculous barn packed full of stuff I want to write about,” she said. “Images, scenes, snatches of words … in my mind they’re all glowing, all alive. Write! they shout at me. A great new story is about to be born I can feel it. It’ll transport me to some brand-new place. Problem is, once I sit at my desk and put them all down on paper, I realize something vital is missing. It doesn’t crystallize—no crystals, just pebbles. And I’m not transported anywhere.

Lying there, I close my eyes for a time, then open them. I silently breathe in, then out. A thought begins to form in my mind, but in the end I think of nothing. Not that there was much difference between the two, thinking and not thinking. I find I can no longer distinguish between one thing and another, between things that existed and things that did not. I look out the window. Until the sky turns white, clouds float by, birds chirp, and a new day lumbers up, gathering together the sleepy minds of the people who inhabit this planet.

O zaman anladım; biz harika yol arkadaşlarıydık, ancak, sonunda her birimiz kendi rotasında gidecek yalnız bir metal kütlesinden başka bir şey değildik. Uzaktan bakınca kayan yıldızlar kadar güzel görünüyorduk. Gerçekte ise, tek başımıza uzaya hapsolmuş, hiçbir yere gidemeyen tutsaklar gibiydik. Ancak iki uydunun yörüngeleri tesadüfen kesişince bir araya gelebiliyorduk. Hatta birbirimize duygularımızı bile açabilirdik. Sadece bir anlığına Hemen sonraki an ise mutlak bir tek başınalığa doğru savrulacaktık. Günün birinde yanıp yok oluncaya dek.

Така живеем живота си сега, всеки сам за себе си. Независимо колко дълбока и непредотвратима загуба сме преживели, колко скъпо ни е било онова, което ни е отнето - изтръгнато направо от ръцете ни - дори впоследствие да сме се променили дотолкова, че от нас, каквито сме били преди, да е останала само кожата, ние продължаваме все така, без излишен шум, да следваме съдбата си. Простираме ръце и се вкопчваме все по-силно в отпуснатото ни време, а после, разбирайки, че сме останали с празни ръце, гледаме как то се отдалечава от нас в посока към миналото.