The Moor's Last Sigh Quotes

A sigh isn't just a sigh. We inhale the world and breathe out meaning. While we can. While we can.

We crave permission openly to become our secret selves.

Ignorantly is how we all fall in love; for it is a kind of fall. Closing our eyes, we leap from that cliff in hope of a soft landing. Nor is it always soft; but still, without that leap nobody comes to life.

How to forgive the world for its beauty, which merely disguises its ugliness; for its gentleness, which merely cloaks its cruelty; for its illusion of continuity, seamlessly, as the night follows the day, so to speak- whereas in reality life is a series of brutal raptures, falling upon your defenseless hands, like the blows of a woodman's axe?

If a birth is the fall-out from the explosion caused by the union of two unstable elements, then perhaps a half-life is all we can expect.

we look up and we hope the stars look down, we pray that there may be stars for us to follow, stars moving across the heavens and leading us to our destiny, but it's only our vanity. We look at the galaxy and fall in love, but the universe cares less about us than we do about it, and the stars stay in their courses however much we may wish upon them to do otherwise. It's true that if you watch the sky-wheel turn for a while you'll see a meteor fall, flame and die. That's not a star worth following; it's just an unlucky rock. Our fates are here on earth. There are no guiding stars.

Confusion to our enemies!

Abraham Zogoiby covered his face that night in August 1939 because he had been assailed by fear, [...] a sudden apprehension that the ugliness of life might defeat its beauty; that love did not make lovers invulnerable. Nevertheless, he thought, even if the world's beauty and love were on the edge of destruction, theirs would still be the only side to be on; defeated love would still be love, hate's victory would not make it other than it was.

I had become a kind of information magpie, gathering to myself all manner of shiny scraps of fact and hokum and books and art-history and politics and music and film, and developing, too, a certain skill in manipulating and arranging these pitiful shards so that they glittered and caught the light. Fool's gold, or priceless nuggets mined from my singular childhood's rich bohemian seam? I leave it to others to decide.

I, however, was raised neither as Catholic nor as Jew. I was both, and nothing: a jewholic-anonymous, a cathjew nut, a stewpot, a mongrel cur. I was--what's the word these days?--atomised. Yessir: a real Bombay mix.

Genius was being born in her, filling the empty spaces in her bed, her heart, her womb. She needed no-one but herself.

they came in search of the hot stuff, just like any man calling on a tart.

...the true direction of her heart: that is to say, inwards, to the reality of dreams.

I'll tell you a secret about fear: it's an absolutist. With fear, it's all or nothing. Either, like any bullying tyrant, it rules your life with stupid blinding omnipotence, or else you overthrow it, and its power vanishes in a puff of smoke. And another secret: the revolution against fear, the engendering of that tawdry despot's fall, has more or less nothing to do with 'courage'. It is driven by something much more straightforward: the simple need to get on with your life.

We, the living, must find what space we can alongside them; the giant dead whom we cannot tie down, though we grasp at their hair, though we rope them while they sleep

BOMBAY WAS CENTRAL, had been so from the moment of its creation: the bastard child of a Portuguese-English wedding, and yet the most Indian of Indian cities. In Bombay all Indias met and merged. In Bombay, too, all-India met what-was-not-India, what came across the black water to flow into our veins. Everything north of Bombay was North India, everything south of it was the South. To the east lay India’s East and to the west, the world’s West. Bombay was central; all rivers flowed into its human sea. It was an ocean of stories; we were all its narrators, and everybody talked at once.

Zamanın hızlandırılmış akışı karşısında kendimi yavaşlatmayı amaçlıyordum boşu boşuna.

In spite of all my efforts to create a neat, tidy, obedient, moderate, unexceptional persona, I was simply too weird for them; until that is, my first female tutor was hired.

There is a thing that lives in us, eating our food, breathing our air, looking out through our eyes, and when it comes out to play nobody is immune; possessed, we turn murderously upon one another, thing-darkness in our eyes and real weapons in our hands, neighbour against thing-ridden neighbour, thing-driven cousin against cousin, brother-thing against brother-thing, thing-child against thing-child.

We look at the galaxy and fall in love, but the universe cares less about us than we do about it, and the stars stay in their courses however much we may wish upon them to do otherwise. It’s true that if you watch the sky-wheel turn for a while you’ll see a meteor fall, flame and die. That’s not a star worth following; it’s just an unlucky rock. Our fates are here on earth. There are no guiding stars.

I'll drink some wine, and then, like a latter-day Van Winkle, I'll lay me down upon this graven stone, lay my head beneath these letters RIP, and close my eyes, according to our family's old practice of falling asleep in times of trouble, and hope to awaken, renewed and joyful, into a better time.

In my family we've always found the world's air hard to breathe; we arrive hoping for somewhere better.

Kaderini kucakla" dedi, "Sana üzüntü verenden keyif al. Kaçmak istediğin şeye doğru dön ve bütün kalbinle ona koş. Talihsizliğini yalnız ona dönüşerek aşabilirsin.

Oysa onu acı acı seviyorlardı, asla karşılık veremeyecek kadar tutkulu bir sevgi duyuyorlardı ona; karşılık vermeyen sevgisinin izin verdiği ölçüde seviyorlardı onu.

Gerçek hemen her zaman istisnai, acayip, beklenmediktir ve neredeyse her zaman kuralsızdır, soğukkanlı hesaplarla önceden tahmin edilemez.

Yenilgiye uğramış aşk yine de bir hazinedir, aşksızlığı seçenler hiç zafer kazanmamış demektir.

Sonunda blöfünün görülmesini istemiyorsan asla ultimatom verme

Yalan işi bitince çürüyüp gidecek; Oysa gerçek büyüktür ve galip gelecek, zaferine aldıran olsa da olmasa da.

Hayatın sunduklarını kavramanın bu kavrayışın doğurduğu sonuçları dışarı yansıtmaktan kolay olması gibi. Bir darbe almanın karşılık verip vurmaktan kolay olması gibi.

Civilsation is the sleight of hand that conceals our natures from ourselves.

Siz olsanız, sınırların karanlık tarafına sürgün edildiğinizde karanlığı aydınlığa çevirmeye çalışmaz mıydınız?

Faced with the possibility that evil existed, that pure malevolence had walked into my life and convinced me it was love, faced with the loss of everything I wanted from my life, I fainted. And dreamed dark dreams of blood.

Pepper it was that brought Vasco da Gama's tall ships across the ocean, from Lisbon's Tower of Belem to the Malabar Coast: first to Calicut and later, for its lagoony harbour, to Cochin. English and French sailed in the wake of that first-arrived Portugee, so that in the period called Discovery-of-India — but how could we be discovered when we were not covered before? — we were 'not so much sub-continent as sub-condiment', as my distinguished mother had it.

And so, out of bloody-mindedness, I had said the word, and we went for the first time, into those Bombay Central alleys that have no name. Lamba introduced me simply as ‘The Moor’, and because I came with him there was less contempt than I had expected.

Yes, I know there is a fashion nowadays for these Hitler's-valet type memoirs, and many people are against, they say we should not humanise the inhuman. But the point is they are not inhuman, these Mainduck-style little Hitlers, and it is in their humanity that we must locate our collective guilt, humanity's guilt for human beings' misdeeds; for if they are just monsters - if it is just a question of King Kong and Godzilla wreaking havoc until the aeroplanes bring them down - then the rest of us are excused.

Kaçarken bir yandan ipuçlarıyla dolu bir korsan haritasına, üzerindeki X işaretlerinin şahsımdan mürekkep bir hazineyi işaret ettiği korsan haritama çevirdim dünyayı. Peşimdekiler bıraktığım izleri sürüp geldikleri zaman beni şikâyetsiz, soluksuz, hazır bekler bulacaklar. İşte burada duruyorum. Olacağı buydu.

Kaçınılmazı kucaklayarak ondan korkmamayı öğrendim. Size korku hakkında bir sır vereyim: Bir mutlakiyetçidir kendisi. Korku ya heptir ya hiç. Ya zalim bir zorba gibi bütün hayatınızı aptalca, kör edici bir kuvvetle yönetir ya da onu bertaraf edersiniz ve gücü bir anda duman olup yiter. Bir sır daha: Korkuya karşı devrimin, o adi despotu devirmenin cesaretle hemen hiç ilgisi yoktur. Çok daha basit bir şeydir ona karşı koymanın yolu: Hayatınıza devam etme isteği duyun yeter. Korkmayı bıraktım çünkü dünya üzerindeki zamanın kısıtlıysa, saçmalıklara ayıracak zamanım yok demekti.

Don't you think Rycca would like to hear about Hadding, the warrior Odin rescued from his enemies? Indeed, so would I for as I recall, the last time I asked about him, you told the story in great haste without the scantiest details." There was a gleam in her eyes that Rycca had come to understand meant she was up to something, but she had no idea what might lurk behind so seemingly innocent a suggestion. Dragon grinned and looked at his brother, who leaned back in his chair and laughed. When Rycca appeared puzzled, Cymbra said, "I confess, when I noticed how attentive you are to Dragon's stories I was reminded of myself. At Wolf's and my wedding feast, I persuaded Dragon to tell a great many tales. He was the soul of patience." "He was?" Wolf interjected. "I was the one with the patience. My dear brother knew perfectly well I was sitting there contemplating various possibilities for doing away with him and he enjoyed every moment of it." "Now how could I have known that, brother?" Dragon challenged. "Just because the wine goblet you were holding was twisted into a very odd shape?" "It was that or your neck, brother," Wolf replied pleasantly. He looked at Rycca reassuringly. "Don't worry, if I hadn't already forgiven him, that sword he gave me would force me to." "It is a magnificent blade," Dragon agreed. "They both are. Every smithy in Christendom is trying to work out what the Moors are doing but..." "It's got something to do with the temperature of the steel," Wolf said. "And with the folding. They fold more than we do, possibly hundreds of times." "Hundreds,really? Then the temperature has to be very high or they couldn't pound that thin. I wonder how much carbon they're adding-" Cymbra sighed. To Rycca, she said, "We might as well retire.They can talk about this for hours." Wolf heard her and laughed. He draped an arm over her chair, pulling her closer. Into her ear, he said something that made the redoubtable Cymbra blush. She cleared her throat. "Oh, well, in that case, you might as well retire, too." Standing up quickly, she took her husband's rugged hand in her much smaller and fairer one. "Good night, Rycca, good night, Dragon. Sleep well." This last was said over her shoulder as she tugged Wolf from the hall. Her obvious intent startled Rycca, who even now could not think herself as being so bold, but it made both the Hakonson brothers laugh. "As you may gather," Dragon said in the aftermath of the couple's departure, "my brother and his wife are happily wed.

Ama sevgililerin inandığı şeye hala inanmak istiyordum: karşılıksız, yenilgiye uğramış ya da çılgınlık dolu da olsa aşkın yerini tutacak başka bir şey olmadığına. Aşkın ruhların karışması, birleşmesi anlamına geldiğine; katışık, melez bir zafer olduğuna, içimizdeki yalnızlığın, yalıtılmışlığın, yalın, dogmatik ve saf olanın karşısında en iyi yönlerimizi bir araya getirdiğine; aşkın demokrasi olduğuna, kimsenin yalnız olmadığını anlattığına; klanın, kötü ve ayrımcı çoğunluğun karşısında iki kişinin yakınlığının zaferi olduğuna inanmak istiyordum. Aşksızlığı kibir gibi görmeye çalışıyordum, çünkü aşksızlardan, sevgisizlerden başka kim tam olduğuna, her şeyi gördüğüne, bildiğine inanırdı? Sevmek her şeye kadir olmayı, her şeyi bilmeyi yitirmek demekti. Hepimiz cahilce aşka düşeriz-bir tür düşüştür gerçekten. Gözlerimizi yumup yumuşak iniş yapma umuduyla uçurumdan aşağı atlarız. İnişimiz her zaman yumuşak olmaz ama ben yine de kendi kendime, o atlayış olmadan kimse canlanamaz diyordum. Ölümle sonuçlansa bile o atlayışın kendisidir yaşam.

Fifteen years old! Okay, okay. In our part of the world that's not so young.

Kalbin hatalarından birinin ne büyük ahmaklık olduğu anlaşıldığında, kendimizi aptal gibi hissederiz ve yakınlarımıza, sevdiklerimize bizi neden vakitlice kendimizden kurtarmadıklarını sorarız. Ancak bu, aramıza kimsenin giremeyeceği bir düşmandır.

Deha zenginlerin kölesi değildir.

Bir şey" tabi "hiçbir şey" den çok, çok daha iyidir, yarı memnun geçirdiğimiz ömrün sonunda karşımıza çıksa bile.

Giderken koşullar ne kadar acı olursa olsun, sonunda dönebildiğiniz yer evinizdir.

Sukha lakad ola zelata (Kuru dal tutuştu mu her şey yanar)

Medeniyet, gerçek doğamızı kendimizden gizleyen bir el çabukluğudur.

Ölümün ölümcüllüğü yalnızca adaleti değil, gerçeklendirmeyi de imkansız kılar.

Dünyanın çirkinliğini saklayan güzelliğini, zalimliğini gizleyen nezaketini, sanki gün geceyi takip ediyormuş gibi pürüzsüzce akıp giden devamlılık ilüzyonunu nasıl affedeceksin? Oysa gerçekte hayat, bir ormancının savunmasız başlarımıza indirdiği balta darbeleri gibi bir dizi sert zorlamadan başka bir şey değil.

La belleza antigua no basta -dijo-. Antiguos lugares, comportamientos antiguos, dioses antiguos. Actualmente el mundo está lleno de preguntas, y hay formas nuevas de belleza.

Güzellik de bir tür kaderdir, güzellik güzellikle konuşur, farkına varır ve onaylar, her konuda mazur görülebileceğine inanır...

Ne yaptığını duymam bilmem sanma. Kalbini ver yoksa keser alırım. Aşk bütün dünya ve yukarıdaki gökyüzü değilse hiçbir şeydir, tozdan kıymetsizdir.

Aşk her şey değilse, hiçbir şeydir.

Suspiro ergo sum.

Bir iç çekiş yalnızca iç çekiş değildir. Dünyayı içimize çekeriz, soluğumuzla birlikte dış dünyaya anlam da veririz. Yapabildiğimiz sürece. Yapabildiğimiz kadarıyla.

Efendilerinizi değiştirmek için giysilerinizi değiştirin.

Yukarıya bakar, yıldızların aşağı baktığını umarız, takip edebileceğimiz bir yıldız bulmak ister, gökyüzünde yükselirken bizi de kaderimize ulaştıracak yıldızları görmek için dua ederiz; hep kibirden. Gökadaya bakar ve aşık oluruz, oysa evren bizlerle onunla ilgilendiğimiz kadar ilgilenmez ve başka türlüsünü ne kadar dilersek dileyelim, yıldızlar güzergah değiştirmez. Gökyüzü çarkının dönüşünü bir süre seyrederseniz bir meteorun tutuştuğunu, alev aldığını ve öldüğünü göreceksiniz, doğrudur. Fakat gördüğünüz takip etmeye değer bir yıldız değil, talihsiz bir taş yalnızca. Bizim kaderimiz burada, dünyada. Klavuz yıldız diye bir şey yoktur.

You need to be careful to stay out of Charlie’s line of sight,” Steve said to me. “I want Charlie focusing only on me. If he changes focus and starts attacking you, it’s going to be too difficult for me to control the situation.” Right. Steve got no argument from me. Getting anywhere near those bone-crushing jaws was the furthest thing from my mind. I wasn’t keen on being down on the water with a huge saltwater crocodile trying to get me. I would have to totally rely on Steve to keep me safe. We stepped into the dinghy, which was moored in Charlie’s enclosure, secured front and back with ropes. Charlie came over immediately to investigate. It didn’t take much to encourage him to have a go at Steve. Steve grabbed a top-jaw rope. He worked on roping Charlie while the cameras rolled. Time and time again, Charlie hurled himself straight at Steve, a half ton of reptile flesh exploding up out of the water a few feet away from me. I tried to hang on precariously and keep the boat counterbalanced. I didn’t want Steve to lose his footing and topple in. Charlie was one angry crocodile. He would have loved nothing more than to get his teeth into Steve. As Charlie used his powerful tail to propel himself out of the water, he arched his neck and opened his jaws wide, whipping his head back and forth, snapping and gnashing. Steve carefully threw the top-jaw rope, but he didn’t actually want to snag Charlie. Then he would have had to get the rope off without stressing the croc, and that would have been tricky. The cameras rolled. Charlie lunged. I cowered. Steve continued to deftly toss the rope. Then, all of a sudden, Charlie swung at the rope instead of Steve, and the rope went right over Charlie’s top jaw. A perfect toss, provided that had been what Steve was trying to do. But it wasn’t. We had a roped croc on our hands that we really didn’t want. Steve immediately let the rope go slack. Charlie had it snagged in his teeth. Because of Steve’s quick thinking and prompt maneuvering, the rope came clear. We breathed a collective sigh of relief. Steve looked up at the cameras. “I think you’ve got it.” John agreed. “I think we do, mate.” The crew cheered. The shoot lasted several minutes, but in the boat, I wasn’t sure if it had been seconds or hours. Watching Steve work Charlie up close had been amazing--a huge, unpredictable animal with a complicated thought process, able to outwit its prey, an animal that had been on the planet for millions of years, yet Steve knew how to manipulate him and got some fantastic footage. To the applause of the crew, Steve got us both out of the boat. He gave me a big hug. He was happy. This was what he loved best, being able to interact and work with wildlife. Never before had anything like it been filmed in any format, much less on thirty-five-millimeter film for a movie theater. We accomplished the shot with the insurance underwriters none the wiser. Steve wanted to portray crocs as the powerful apex predators that they were, keeping everyone safe while he did it. Never once did he want it to appear as though he were dominating the crocodile, or showing off by being in close proximity to it. He wished for the crocodile to be the star of the show, not himself. I was proud of him that day. The shoot represented Steve Irwin at his best, his true colors, and his desire to make people understand how amazing these animals are, to be witnessed by audiences in movie theaters all over the world. We filmed many more sequences with crocs, and each time Steve performed professionally and perfected the shots. He was definitely in his element. With the live-croc footage behind us, the insurance people came on board, and we were finally able to sign a contract with MGM. We were to start filming in earnest. First stop: the Simpson Desert, with perentie lizards and fierce snakes.

Ich würde lieber im Kampf um große Dichter sterben als in einem Krieg um Götter.

Call it Mooristan,’ Aurora told me. ‘This seaside, this hill, with the fort on top. Water-gardens and hanging gardens, watchtowers and towers of silence too. Place where worlds collide, flow in and out of one another, and washofy away. Place where an air-man can drowno in water, or else grow gills; where a water-creature can get drunk, but also chokeofy, on air.

This floor is a cold floor. I should get up off this floor. There's still a fat fellow over there, and he's pointing a pistol at my heart.

Do jungle animals understand the true nature of the trees among which they have their daily being? In the parent-forest, amid those mighty trunks, we shelter and play; but whether the trees are healthy or corroded, whether they harbour demons or good spirites, we cannot say. Nor do we know the greatest secret of all: that one day we, too, will become as arboreal as they. And the trees, whose leaves we eat, whose bark we gnaw, remember sadly that they were animals once, they climbed like squirrels and bounded like deer, until one day they paused, and their legs grew down into the earth and stuck there, spreading, and vegetation sprouted from their swaying heads. They remember this as a fact; but the lived reality of their fauna years, the how-it-felt of that chaotic freedom is beyond recapture. They remember it as a rustle in their leaves.

Aurora’s studio she stole three charcoal sketches of me as a young boy, sketches in which my ruined hand had been wondrously metamorphosed, becoming, variously, a flower, a paintbrush and a sword. Miss Jaya took these sketches to my Dilly’s flat and said they were a gift from the ‘young Sahib’. Then she told Aurora that she had seen the teacher pinching them, and, excuse me, Begum Sahib, but that woman’s attitude to our boy is not a moral one.

Epifania’s first order was the most ancient wish of dynasts: that Carmen must conceive a male child, a king-in-waiting through whom his loving mother and grandmother would rule. Carmen, realising in her bitter consternation that this very first instruction would have to be disobeyed, lowered her eyes, muttered, ‘Okay, Epifania Aunty, wish is my command,’ and fled the room.

Abraham as a boy crawled around the synagogue bum-in-air with his nose pressed against antique Chinese blue. He never told his mother that his father had reappeared in ceramic form on the synagogue floor a year after he decamped, in a little blue rowing-boat with blue-skinned foreign-looking types by his side, heading off towards an equally blue horizon.

…it is a matter of record that in our sorry age with its prejudice in favour of male children many poor families donated to their favoured cult-temple the daughters they could not afford to marry off or feed, in the hope that they might live in holiness as servants or, if they were fortunate, as dancers; vain hopes, alas, for in many cases the priests in charge of these temples were men in whom the highest standards of probity were mysteriously absent, a failing which laid them open to offers of cash on the nail for the young virgins and not-quite-virgins and once-again-virgins in their charge. Thus Abraham the spice merchant was able to use his widespread Southern connections to harvest a new crop, entered in his most secret ledgers as 'Garam Masala Super Quality', and also, I note with some embarrassment, 'Extra Hot Chilli Peppers: Green.

I am being flayed,’ he told her in his dream. ‘It is my holy calling. We will never gain our humanity until we lose our skins.

But I don’t care about money,” Jacy said solemnly. “I don’t care about it at all.” Lois sighed. “You’re pretty stupid then,” she said. “If you’re that stupid you ought to go and marry him—it would be the cheapest way to educate you.

Ah, the dead, the unended, endlessly ending dead: how long, how rich is their story. We, the living must find what space we can alongside them; the giant dead whom we cannot tie down, through we grasp at their hair, though we rope them while they sleep.

Children make fictions of their fathers, re-inventing them according to their childish needs. The reality of a father is a weight few sons can bear.

By embracing the inescapable, I lost my fear of it. I’ll tell you a secret about fear: it’s an absolutist. With fear, it’s all or nothing. Either, like any bullying tyrant, it rules your life with a stupid blinding omnipotence, or else you overthrow it, and its power vanishes in a puff of smoke. And another secret: the revolution against

I spoke no Spanish, so I was unable to haggle with the taxi-drivers. 'Benengeli,' I said, and the first cabbie shook his head and walked away, spitting copiously. The second named a number that had no meaning for me. I had come to a place where I did not know the names of things or the motives for men's deeds. The universe was absurd. I could not say 'dog', or 'where?', or 'I am a man'. Besides, my head was thick, like a soup.

Yalnız benim (renkli ve gösterişli olmasına rağmen) pek uzun sayılamayacak hayatımın sonunda, çivileyip asacak tezlerim taze bitti. Hayat da çarmıha çivilenmekten pek farklı değil zaten.

İnsan sıfırı tüketmeye yaklaşınca, adım atmaya mecali kalmayınca, günah çıkarma zamanı gelmiş demektir. İster vasiyet deyin ister (hür) irade – veya yaşamın Son Soluk Salonu. Hayatıma dair hükümleri yollar boyunca bulduğum her yere çiviledikten sonra, cebimde kızıl bir kalenin anahtarlarıyla burada durmamın – daha doğrusu oturmamın nedeni bu işte; nihai teslimiyetten önceki bekleyiş anlarını geçirmek.

Our take on a rhubarb and custard," Susan announces. "Rhubarb sorbet on the bottom, topped with whipped custard and a candied rhubarb sweet." It's served in small egg-shaped glasses, so you can see the layers: bright pink sorbet on the bottom, rich lemon-yellow custard, whipped to airy delicacy, topped with a wafer-thin, jewel-like disc of rhubarb that's been roasted, pressed flat, and encased in rhubarb-flavored praline. The chef takes two bites of it, then sits back, sighs, and looks at his plate for a while. Susan feels like melting into the floor. He hates it! What went wrong? Is it too simple? She worried about that. Maybe she should have done a tart or a mille-feuille. "This tastes of summer," the chef says at last. "Every bit of it is delightful and delicious- it's so light and airy and enjoyable." "I totally agree," says the presenter. "It's the perfect follow-up to something as heavy as those ribs, and the flavors remind me of rhubarb and custard sweets, which really takes me back." "Yeah, me too." The blogger nods. "Raiding the sweet shop after school.

left Granada behind and climbed over the pass of Suspiro del Moro, the Moor’s sigh, where the last Muslim king had turned to weep as he was exiled forever from his beloved city. Little wonder.