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Quotes by Belgian Authors
"Fashion is like the ashes left behind by the uniquely shaped flames of the fire, the trace alone revealing that a fire actually took place."
"It is the cells which create and maintain in us, during the span of our lives, our will to live and survive, to search and experiment, and to struggle."
"The word survivor suggests someone who has emerged alive from a plane crash or a natural disaster. But the word can also refer to the loved ones of murder victims, and this was the sense in which it was used at a four-day conference in early June at Boston College."
"I believe in manicures. I believe in overdressing. I believe in primping at leisure and wearing lipstick. I believe in pink. I believe happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day, and... I believe in miracles."
"One single vision fills all minds: that of our independence endangered. One single duty imposes itself upon our wills: the duty of stubborn resistance."
"We do not believe that the Marxist program, which embodies the continuity of the experience of the actual class struggle and real revolutions of the last one hundred and fifty years, is a definitely closed book."
"Just don't go to a place where everything is too expensive... it'll put your husband in a bad mood."
"Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you're exactly the same."
"We may wonder what is going on in the back of the mind and what betides in the mood of some people who live on the edge of isolation and emotional poverty. They belong to life's outcasts: deserted by affection, deprived of physical or lingual contact and finally reduced to silence. ['Why didn't he ask ? ']"
"When life hasn't got a swing anymore, people may give in to obsessive oniomaniac compulsions, in as much as they are going out of their way to construct a flamboyant life style and change their identity from "don't-need to "must-have consumers, so as to satisfy their gripping buying desire. ['Buying now. Dying later']"
"Only if we transvalue the plain-vanilla standards of our life, we may bring back things to light and sense the lies behind perceptions. ['Behind the frosted glass']"
"I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! I wish I'd invented it, because it is very true."
"Looking back 25 years later, what I may say is that the facts have been far better than the dreams. In the long course of cell life on this earth it remained, for our age for our generation, to receive the full ownership of our inheritance."
"I guess the line between being paranoid and being a rock star is smaller than one would expect."
"Some men can be good ' horse whisperers ' and many dogs can be wonderful ' man whisperers '."
"I know that I'm going to have to work hard, keep working hard, and not because of this victory think, "I'm back." I don't think like that. I'll definitely work hard. Things are not going to be easy. I might lose first round next week. You never know."
"People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone."
"Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can't take it in all at once."
"To be a surrealist means barring from your mind all remembrance of what you have seen, and being always on the lookout for what has never been."
"The problem for Rome, then, is how and when the intervention should be done with a sense of the possibility of going too far in limiting the freedom of theologians. This is not an easy time - neither for Rome nor for the theologians."
"Periodically, the workers do revolt against bourgeois society, not by a hundred, five hundred, or a thousand, but by the millions."
"A promise is a gift and a gift is a symbol of a social relationship. The donor is aware that it creates a link and the recipient identifies it as a mutual bond. A gift, however, is tangible and a promise is not. Eventually, a promise can be expounded as misunderstood, or misheard or it is simply over and done. If misheard, the social bond is to be put into question. If forgotten, it can be reminded but this is embarrassing. If elapsed, it is one of those broken promises that infest countless relationships. ['Promised me a breeze of freedom']"
"Between shortage and absolute poverty an ocean of shades and gradations do emerge on the scale of deficiency. Be that as it may, each stage must find a mode to leave a door ajar for the sun to peer in and human warmth to radiate. [' Homeless down in the corner']"
"For over two billion years, through the apparent fancy of her endless differentiations and metamorphosis the Cell, as regards its basic physiological mechanisms, has remained one and the same. It is life itself, and our true and distant ancestor."
"I was asked to act when I couldn't act. I was asked to sing 'Funny Face' when I couldn't sing, and dance with Fred Astaire when I couldn't dance - and do all kinds of things I wasn't prepared for. Then I tried like mad to cope with it."
"I decided, very early on, just to accept life unconditionally; I never expected it to do anything special for me, yet I seemed to accomplish far more than I had ever hoped. Most of the time it just happened to me without my ever seeking it."
"Since the world has existed, there has been injustice. But it is one world, the more so as it becomes smaller, more accessible. There is just no question that there is more obligation that those who have should give to those who have nothing."
"You cannot make a socialist revolution without really trying."
"If reshaping a life style boils down to pretending and dwindling into a world of make-believe, living may turn into a schizophrenic merry-go-round and the real self might be crunched and munched on, piece by piece. ['He did not know that she knew']"
"Emotion often outwits intelligence, while intuition renders life surprisingly fluent and enjoyable. ['Le ciel c'est l'autre']"
"My parents had a pub and each Sunday there was an accordionist. They have told me that when I was in my cradle, I already was imitating the gestures of the musician."
"Revolution is an instrument, like a party is an instrument."
"Do we not all spend the greater part of our lives under the shadow of an event that has not yet come to pass?"
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