Veronika Decides To Die Quotes

The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.

People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.

Be crazy! But learn how to be crazy without being the center of attention. Be brave enough to live different.

You have two choices, to control your mind or to let your mind control you.

You are someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that in my view is a serious illness. God chose you to be different. Why are you disappointing God with this kind of attitude?

If one day I could get out of here, I would allow myself to be crazy. Everyone is indeed crazy, but the craziest are the ones who don't know they're crazy; they just keep repeating what others tell them to.

She didn't quite know what the relationship was between lunatics and the moon, but it must be a strong one, if they used a word like that to describe the insane.

Nothing in this world happens by chance

Haven't you learned anything, not even with the approach of death? Stop thinking all the time that you're in the way, that you're bothering the person next to you. If people don't like it, they can complain. And if they don't have the courage to complain, that's their problem

Collective madness is called sanity ..

I want to continue being crazy; living my life the way I dream it, and not the way the other people want it to be.

Be like the fountain that overflows, not like the cistern that merely contains.

She would consider each day a miracle - which indeed it is, when you consider the number of unexpected things that could happen in each second of our fragile existences.

Nothing in this world happens by chance.

You say they create their own reality," said Veronika, "but what is reality?

Many people don't allow themselves to love...because there are a lot of things at risk a lot of future and a lot of past.

Death frees from the fear of dying

If only everyone could know and live with their inner craziness. Would the world be a worse place for it? No, people would be fairer and happier.

The danger of an adventure is worth a thousand days of ease and comfort

We all live in our own world. But if you look up at the starry sky - you'll see that all the different worlds up there combine to form constellations, solar systems, galaxies.

The happier people can be, the unhappier they are.

كانت متعالية على الأشياء الصغيره وكأنها تحاول أن تثبت لنفسها كم هى قوية وغير مكترثة فى حين كانت فى الواقع امرأه هشة

Personal growth has its price, and she was paying it without complaint.

Life is always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.

it's best to accept life as it really is and not as I imagined it to be

This time I m not going to tell you a story. I'll just say that insanity is the inability to communicate your ideas. It's as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that's going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don't understand the language they speak there.

Real love changes and grows with time and discovers new ways of expressing itself.

we’re allowed to make a lot of mistakes in our lives, except the mistake that destroy us

وأهدرت معظم طاقتها محاولة التصرف بما يلائم الصورة التى ضنعتها لنفسها .. ولهذا لم تكن لديها الطاقة الكافية لأن تكون نفسها

I wanted to...feel hatred and love, despair and tedium-- all those simple, yet foolish things that make up everyday life but that give pleasure to your existence. If one day I could get out of here, I would allow myself to be crazy, Everyone is indeed crazy, but the craziest are the ones who don't know they are crazy; they just keep repeating what others tell them to.

LIVE. If you live, god will live with you. If you refuse to run his risks, he'll retreat to that distant heaven and be merely a subject for philosophical speculation.

الوعى بالموت يشجعنا على الحياة بكثافة أكثر

Hatred. Something almost as physical as walls, pianos, or nurses. She could almost touch the destructive energy leaking out of her body. She allowed the feeling to emerge, regardless of whether it was good or bad; she was sick of self-control, of masks, of appropriate behavior. Veronika wanted to spend her remaining two or three days of life behaving as inappropriately as she could.

What is I? It's what you are, not what others make of you.

Everyone is indeed crazy but the craziest are those who don't know they're crazy; they just keep repeating what others tell them to.

Stop thinking all the time that you're in the way, that you're bothering the person next to you. If people don't like it, they can complain. And if they don't have courage to complain, that's their problem.

When I took the pills, I wanted to kill someone I hated. I didn't know that other Veronikas existed inside me, Veronikas that I could love.

She imagined herself both queen and slave, dominatrix and victim. In her imagination she was making love with men of all skin colors--white, black, yellow--with homosexuals and beggars. She was anyone's, and anyone could do anything to her. She had one, two, three orgasms, one after another. She imagined everything she had never imagined before, and she gave herself to all that was most base and most pure.

A lot of people think something is right, and so that thing becomes right.

They spent days, nights, weeks, and years talking, never accepting the fact that, good or bad, an idea only exists when someone tries to put it into practice.

You have passed through the two hardest tests on the spiritual road: the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what you encounter.

because it seemed too simple to accept that life was an act of faith.

Once upon a time, powerful wizard, who wanted to destroy an entire kingdom, placed a magic potion in the well from which the inhabitants drank. Whoever drank that water would go mad. The following morning, the whole population drank from the well and they all went mad, apart from the king and his family, who had a well set aside for them alone, which the magician had not managed to poison. The king was worried and tried to control the population by issuing a series of edicts governing security and public health. The policemen and the inspectors, however, had also drunk the poisoned water, and they thought the king’s decisions were absurd and resolved to take notice of them. When the inhabitants of the kingdom heard these decrees, they became convinced that the king had gone mad and was now giving nonsensical orders. The marched on the castle and called for his abdication. In despair the king prepared to step down from the throne, but the queen stopped him, saying: ‘Let us go and drink from the communal well. Then we will be the same as them.’ And that was what they did: The king and queen drank the water of madness and immediately began talking nonsense. Their subjects repented at once; now that the king was displaying such ‘wisdom’, why not allow him to rule the country? The country continued to live in peace, although its inhabitants behaved very differently from those of its neighbors. And the king was able to govern until the end of his days.

Insanity is the inability to communicate your ideas. It's as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that's going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don't understand the language they speak there. We've all felt that. And all of us, one way or another, are insane.

كُفي عن الاعتقاد بأنك تعترضين طريق أحدهم دوما ، بأنك تزعجين من هو إلى جانبك ! إن تضايق الآخرون باستطاعتهم التذمر ، وإن لم يملكوا الشجاعة لذلك ، فهي مشكلتهم

In a world where everyone struggles to survive whatever the cost, how could one judge those people who decide to die? No one can judge. Each person knows the extent of their own suffering or the total absence of meaning in their lives.

You don't seem mad at all,' she said. But I am, although I'm undergoing a cure, because my problem is that I lack a particular chemical. However, while I hope that the chemical gets rid of my chronic depression, I want to continue being mad, living life the way I dream it, and not the way other people want it to be. Do you know what exists out there, beyond the walls of Villete?

Certain people, in their eagerness to construct a world no external threat can penetrate build exaggeratedly high defense againts the outside world, againts new people, new places, different experiences and leave their own world stripped bare. It is there that bitterness begins irrevocable work.

Because when everyone dreams, but only a few realize their dreams, that makes cowards of us all.

أود أن أبقى على حالي مجنونة، أحيا حياتي كما أتخيلها على طريقتي، لا على طريقة الآخرين. هم يعتقدون بأنهم طبيعيون لأنهم يقومون جميعًا بالأمور ذاتها.

In a world where everyone struggles to survive whatever the cost, how could one judge those who decide to die?

Man struggles to survive, not to succumb

Whenever a new situation presented itself, you had to remain cool and distant

Once in a mental hospital, a person grows used to the freedom that exists in the world of madness and becomes addicted to it. You no longer have to take on responsibilities, to struggle to earn your daily bread, to be bothered with repetitive, mundane tasks. You could spend hours looking at a picture or making absurd doodles. Everything is torelated because, after all, the person is mentally ill.

She was neither happy nor unhappy, and that was why she couldn't go on.

Possibly. Basically,everything that happens in our life is our fault and ours alone. A lot of people go through the same difficulties we went through, and they react completely differently. We looked for the easiest way out: a separate reality.

That is why embittered people find heroes and madmen a perennial source of fascination, for they have no fear of life or death. Both heroes and madmen are indifferent to danger and will forge ahead regardless of what other people say.

The music could even penetrate his remote world, more distant than the moon itself; it could even perform miracles.

if you force yourself to be the same as everyone else. It causes neuroses, psychoses, and paranoia. it's a distortion of nature, it goes against God's laws, for in all the world's woods and forests he did not create a single leaf the same as another.

Normality is merely a matter of consensus; that is, a lot of people think something is right, and so that thing becomes right.

As she had been walking from the ward to that room, she had felt such pure hatred that now she had no more rancor left in her heart. She had finally allowed her negative feelings to surface, feelings that had been repressed for years in her soul. She had actually FELT them, and they were no longer necessary, they could leave.

Once in a mental hospital, a person grows used to the the freedom that exists in the world of insanity and becomes addicted to it.

She regretted having taken his hand, she wanted to get away from there as soon as possible, to hide her shame, never again to see that man who had witnessed all that was most sordid in her, and who nevertheless continued to treat her with such tenderness. But again she remembered Mari's words: She didn't need to explain her life to anyone, not even to the young man standing before her.

You can't spend the whole day waiting for night to come.

Come on, let's go. Crazy people do crazy things.

Oddly enough I never used to suffer from depression on cold, gray, cloudy days like this. I feel as if nature is in harmony with me, that it reflected my soul. On the other hand, when the sun appeared, the children would come out to play in the streets, and everyone was happy that it was such a lovely day, and then I would feel terrible, as if that display of exuberance in which i could not participate was somehow unfair.

Insanity is the ability to communicate your ideas. It’s as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that’s going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don’t understand the language they speak there.

كثيراً من الناس الذين نعرفهم يتحدثون عن آلام ومصائب حيوات الآخرين وكأنهم مهتمون وقلقون بالفعل ..ولكن الحقيقه أنهم يتمتعون بمعاناة الآخرين لأن ذلك يجعلهم يؤمنون بأنهم سعداء جداً وأن الحياه كريمه للغايه معهم .

she considered the possibility of telling her about everything that was happening, but then she changed her mind; people never learn anything by being told; they have to find out for themselves.

إن كلا منا فريد ، يملك صفاته الخاصة ، وغرائزه ، وأنواعا من اللذة يستمتع بها ، ورغبة في خوض المغامرات . غير أن المجتمع يفرض علينا دوما طريقة جماعية في السلوك ، ولا يكف الناس يتساءلون لما عليهم التصرف على هذا النحو . هم يتقبلون ذلك بكل بساطة

الحياة لعبة عنيفة هاذية . الحياة هى أن ترمى بنفسك من مظلة وأن تجازف , ان تسقط وتنهض من كبوتك الحياة . الحياة هى هى أن تتسلق الجبال لتحاكى الرغبة فى تسلق قمة النفس , وان لم تتوصل الى ذلك , فعليك أن تعيش قانعا ذليلا.

Stay insane, but behave like normal people. Run the risk of being different, but learn to do so without attracting attention. Concentrate on this flower and allow the real "I" to reveal itself.

Be crazy! But learn how to be crazy without being the center of attention. Be brave enough to live different.

حتى إذا سمحوا لها أن تمارس ما يحلو لها من جنون ، فلن تعلم من أين تبدأ . ذلك أنها لم تتصرف يوما بجنون

Because of that she had never had enough energy to be herself, a person who, like everyone else in the world, needed other people in order to be happy. But other people were so difficult. They reacted in unpredictable ways, they surrounded themselves with defensive walls, they behaved just as she did, pretending they didn't care about anything. When someone more open to life appeared, they either rejected them outright or made them suffer, consigning them to being inferior, ingenuous.

La conciencia de la muerte nos anima a vivir más

You should paint those visions of paradise rather than just talking about them.

Two more divorces. Free again, but it’s just a feeling; freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose—and commit myself to—what is best for me.

Mari remembered what she had read in the young girl's eyes the moment she had come into the refectory: fear. Fear. Veronika might feel insecurity, shyness, shame, constraint, but why fear? That was only justifiable when confronted by a real threat: ferocious animals, armed attackers, earthquakes, but not a group of people gathered together in a refectory. But human beings are like that,' she thought. 'We've replaced nearly all our emotions with fear.

La locura es la incapacidad para comunicar tus ideas. Como si estuvieras en un país extranjero, viendo todo, entendiendo lo que pasa a tu alrededor, pero incapaz de explicarte y ser ayudado porque no entiendes la lengua que hablan allí.

Your answer is the logical, coherent answer an absolutely normal person would give: It's a tie! A lunatic, however, would say that what I have around my neck is a ridiculous, useless bit of colored cloth tied in a very complicated way, which makes it harder to get air into your lungs and difficult to turn your neck. I have to be careful when I'm anywhere near a fan, or I could be strangled by this bit of cloth. If a lunatic were to ask me what this tie is for, I would have to say, absolutely nothing. It's not even purely decorative, since nowadays it's become a symbol of slavery, power, aloofness. The only really useful function a tie serves is the sense of relief when you get home and take it off; you feel as if you've freed yourself from something, though quite what you don't know.

She hated the love she had been given, because it had asked for nothing in return, which was absurd, unreal, against the laws of nature

الذي أعرفه أنه استغرق مني ثلاثة أعوام كي أدرك أن الحياةكانت تدفعني في اتجاه لم أرغب أن امضي فيه

there are two spiritual tests: The patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be diappointed to what you have encounter.

Nadie puede juzgar, sólo uno sabe la dimensión de su propio sufrimiento o de la ausencia total de sentido de su vida.

Then she opened her eyes, Veronika did not think 'this must be heaven'. Heaven would never use a fluorescent tube to light a room, and the pain - which started a fraction of a second later - was typical of the Earth. Ah, that Earth pain - unique, unmistakable.

Each human being is unique, each with their own qualities, instincts, forms of pleasure, and desire for adventure. However, society always imposes on us a collective ways of behaving, and people never stop to wonder why they should behave like that. They just accept it, the way typists accepted the fact that the QWERTY keyboard was the best possible one. Have you ever met anyone is your entire life who asked why the hands of a clock should go in one particular direction and not the other?

Am I cured?” “No. You’re someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that, in my view, is a serious illness.

Veronica hated everything, but mainly she hated the way she had lived her life, never bothering to discover the hundreds of other Veronicas who lived inside her and who were interesting, crazy, curious, brave, bold.

I can't be in love with a man who lives in another world.

I can’t explain why, I just know. Do you remember the first question I ever asked you?” “Yes, you asked me if I knew what being crazy meant.” “Exactly. This time I’m not going to tell you a story. I’ll just say that insanity is the inability to communicate your ideas. It’s as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that’s going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don’t understand the language they speak there.” “We’ve all felt that” “And all of us, one way or another, are insane.

In the small central square of Ljubljana, the statue of the poet stares fixedly at something. If you follow his gaze, you will see, on the other side of the square, the face of a woman carved into the stone of one of the houses. That was where Julia had lived. Even after death, Prešeren gaze for all eternity on his Impossible love.

Each human being is unique, each with their own qualities, instincts, forms of pleasure, and desire for adventure. However, society always imposes on us a collective way of behaving, and people never stop to wonder why they should behave like that. They just accept it...You're someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that, in my view, is a serious illness

Have you ever been to Florence?” asked Dr. Igor. “No.” “You should go there; it’s not far, for that is where you will find my second example. In the cathedral in Florence, there’s a beautiful clock designed by Paolo Uccello in 1443. Now, the curious thing about this clock is that, although it keeps time like all other clocks, its hands go in the opposite direction to that of normal clocks.” “What’s that got to do with my illness?” “I’m just coming to that. When he made this clock, Paolo Uccello was not trying to be original: The fact is that, at the time, there were clocks like his as well as others with hands that went in the direction we’re familiar with now. For some unknown reason, perhaps because the duke had a clock with hands that went in the direction we now think of as the “right” direction, that became the only direction, and Uccello’s clock then seemed an aberration, a madness.” Dr. Igor paused, but he knew that Mari was following his reasoning. “So, let’s turn to your illness: Each human being is unique, each with their own qualities, instincts, forms of pleasure, and desire for adventure. However, society always imposes on us a collective way of behaving, and people never stop to wonder why they should behave like that. They just accept it, the way typists accepted the fact that the QWERTY keyboard was the best possible one. Have you ever met anyone in your entire life who asked why the hands of a clock should go in one particular direction and not in the other?” “No.” “If someone were to ask, the response they’d get would probably be: ‘You’re crazy.’ If they persisted, people would try to come up with a reason, but they’d soon change the subject, because there isn’t a reason apart from the one I’ve just given you. So to go back to your question. What was it again?” “Am I cured?” “No. You’re someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that, in my view, is a serious illness.” “Is wanting to be different a serious illness?” “It is if you force yourself to be the same as everyone else. It causes neuroses, psychoses, and paranoia. It’s a distortion of nature, it goes against God’s laws, for in all the world’s woods and forests, he did not create a single leaf the same as another. But you think it’s insane to be different, and that’s why you chose to live in Villete, because everyone is different here, and so you appear to be the same as everyone else. Do you understand?” Mari nodded. “People go against nature because they lack the courage to be different, and then the organism starts to produce Vitriol, or bitterness, as this poison is more commonly known.

If God exists, and I truly don’t believe he does, he will know that there are limits to human understanding. He was the one who created this confusion in which there is poverty, injustice, greed, and loneliness. He doubtless had the best of intentions, but the results have proved disastrous; if God exists, he will be generous with those creatures who chose to leave this Earth early, and he might even apologize for having made us spend time here.

Am I cured?” “No. You’re someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that, in my view, is a serious illness.” “Is wanting to be different a serious illness?” “It is if you force yourself to be the same as everyone else. It causes neuroses, psychoses, and paranoia. It’s a distortion of nature, it goes against God’s laws, for in all the world’s woods and forests, he did not create a single leaf the same as another. But you think it’s insane to be different, and that’s why you chose to live in Villete, because everyone is different here, and so you appear to be the same as everyone else. Do you understand?” Mari nodded. “People go against nature because they lack the courage to be different, and then the organism starts to produce Vitriol, or bitterness, as this poison is more commonly known.

Have you ever wondered why the keys on a typewriter are arranged in that particular order?” “No, I haven’t.” “We call it the QWERTY keyboard, because that’s the order of the letters on the first row of keys. I once wondered why it was like that, and I found the answer. The first machine was invented by Christopher Sholes, in 1873, to improve on calligraphy, but there was a problem: If a person typed very fast, the keys got stuck together and stopped the machine from working. Then Sholes designed the QWERTY keyboard, a keyboard that would oblige typists to type more slowly. ” “I don’t believe it.” “But it’s true. It so happened that Remington—which made sewing machines as well as guns at the time—used the QWERTY keyboard for its first typewriters. That meant that more people were forced to learn that particular system, and more companies started to make those keyboards, until it became the only available model. To repeat: The keyboard on typewriters and computers was designed so that people would type more slowly, not more quickly, do you understand? If you changed the letters around, you wouldn’t find anyone to buy your product.” When she saw a keyboard for the first time, Mari had wondered why the letters weren’t in alphabetical order, but she had then promptly forgotten about it. She assumed it was simply the best layout for people to type quickly.

When she decided to get a job, she rejected a tempting offer from a company that had just been set up in her recently created country in favor of a job at the public library, where you didn’t earn much money but where you were secure. She went to work every day, always keeping to the same timetable, always making sure she wasn’t perceived as a threat by her superiors; she was content; she didn’t struggle, and so she didn’t grow: All she wanted was her salary at the end of the month. She rented the room in the convent because the nuns required all tenants to be back at a certain hour, and then they locked the door: Anyone still outside after that had to sleep on the street. She always had a genuine excuse to give boyfriends, so as not to have to spend the night in hotel rooms or strange beds. When she used to dream of getting married, she imagined herself in a little house outside Ljubljana, with a man quite different from her father—a man who earned enough to support his family, one who would be content just to be with her in a house with an open fire and to look out at the snow-covered mountains. She had taught herself to give men a precise amount of pleasure; never more, never less, only what was necessary. She didn’t get angry with anyone, because that would mean having to react, having to do battle with the enemy and then having to face unforeseen consequences, such as vengeance. When she had achieved almost everything she wanted in life, she had reached the conclusion that her existence had no meaning, because every day was the same. And she had decided to die.

Does God exist? Unlike many people, this had not been the great inner debate of her life. Under the old Communist regime, the official line in schools had been that life ended with death, and she had gotten used to the idea. On the other hand, her parents’ generation and her grandparents’ generation still went to church, said prayers, and went on pilgrimages, and were utterly convinced that God listened to what they said. At twenty-four, having experienced everything she could experience—and that was no small achievement—Veronika was almost certain that everything ended with death. That is why she had chosen suicide: freedom at last. Eternal oblivion. In her heart of hearts, though, there was still a doubt: What if God did exist? Thousands of years of civilization had made of suicide a taboo, an affront to all religious codes: Man struggles to survive, not to succumb. The human race must procreate. Society needs workers. A couple has to have a reason to stay together, even when love has ceased to exist, and a country needs soldiers, politicians and artists. If God exists, and I truly don’t believe he does, he will know that there are limits to human understanding. He was the one who created this confusion in which there is poverty, injustice, greed, and loneliness. He doubtless had the best of intentions, but the results have proved disastrous; if God exists, he will be generous with those creatures who chose to leave this Earth early, and he might even apologize for having made us spend time here. To hell with taboos and superstitions. Her devout mother would say: “God knows the past, the present, and the future.” In that case, he had placed her in this world in the full knowledge that she would end up killing herself, and he would not be shocked by her actions. Veronika began to feel a slight nausea, which became rapidly more intense.

I once saw a woman wearing a low-cut dress; she had a glazed look in her eyes, and she was walking the streets of Ljubljana when it was five degrees below zero. I thought she must be drunk, and I went to help her, but she refused my offer to lend her my jacket. Perhaps in her world it was summer and her body was warmed by the desire of the person waiting for her. Even if that person only existed in her delirium, she had the right to live and die as she wanted, don’t you think?” Veronika didn’t know what to say, but the madwoman’s words made sense to her. Who knows; perhaps she was the woman who had been seen half-naked walking the streets of Ljubljana? “I’m going to tell you a story,” said Zedka. “A powerful wizard, who wanted to destroy an entire kingdom, placed a magic potion in the well from which all the inhabitants drank. Whoever drank that water would go mad. “The following morning, the whole population drank from the well and they all went mad, apart from the king and his family, who had a well set aside for them alone, which the magician had not managed to poison. The king was worried and tried to control the population by issuing a series of edicts governing security and public health. The policemen and the inspectors, however, had also drunk the poisoned water, and they thought the king’s decisions were absurd and resolved to take no notice of them. “When the inhabitants of the kingdom heard these decrees, they became convinced that the king had gone mad and was now giving nonsensical orders. They marched on the castle and called for his abdication. “In despair the king prepared to step down from the throne, but the queen stopped him, saying: ‘Let us go and drink from the communal well. Then we will be the same as them.’ “And that was what they did: The king and the queen drank the water of madness and immediately began talking nonsense. Their subjects repented at once; now that the king was displaying such wisdom, why not allow him to continue ruling the country? “The country continued to live in peace, although its inhabitants behaved very differently from those of its neighbors. And the king was able to govern until the end of his days.” Veronika laughed. “You don’t seem crazy at all,” she said. “But I am, although I’m undergoing treatment since my problem is that I lack a particular chemical. While I hope that the chemical gets rid of my chronic depression, I want to continue being crazy, living my life the way I dream it, and not the way other people want it to be. Do you know what exists out there, beyond the walls of Villete?” “People who have all drunk from the same well.” “Exactly,” said Zedka. “They think they’re normal, because they all do the same thing. Well, I’m going to pretend that I have drunk from the same well as them.