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Quotes by Chilean Authors
"And everything burned in blue, everything a star."
"Child who does not play is not a child, but the man who does not play has lost forever the child who lived within him and who he will miss terribly."
"The word was born in the blood, grew in the dark body, beating, and took flight through the lips and the mouth. Farther away and nearer still, still it came from dead fathers and from wondering races, from lands which had turned to stone, lands weary of their poor tribes, for when grief took to the roads the people set out and arrived and married new land and water to grow their words again. And so this is the inheritance; this is the wavelength which connects us with dead men and the dawning of new beings not yet come to light."
"The days aren't discarded or collected, they are beesthat burned with sweetness or maddenedthe sting: the struggle continues,the journeys go and come between honey and pain.No, the net of years doesn't unweave: there is no net.They don't fall drop by drop from a river: there is no river.Sleep doesn't divide life into halves,or action, or silence, or honor:life is like a stone, a single motion,a lonesome bonfire reflected on the leaves,an arrow, only one, slow or swift, a metalthat climbs or descends burning in your bones."
"No, my dog used to gaze at me,paying me the attention I need,the attention requiredto make a vain person like me understandthat, being a dog, he was wasting time,but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,he'd keep on gazing at mewith a look that reserved for me aloneall his sweet and shaggy life,always near me, never troubling me,and asking nothing."
"It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour which the night fastens to all timetables."
"I know you exist not just because your eyes flyand give light to things like an open window."
"She did not believe that the world was a vale of tears but rather a joke that God had played and that it was idiotic to take it seriously if He himself never had."
"Of so much moon were your hips to me,of all the sun your deep mouth and its delight,of so much burning light like honey in the shade."
"Then love knew it was called love. And when I lifted my eyes to your name, suddenly your heart showed me my way."
"Seated by her side in the narrow cabin, pressing cold compresses to her forehead and holding her while she vomited, he felt profoundly happy...."
"Come see the cherry trees of a water constellationand the round key of the rapid universe,come touch the fire of instantaneous blue,come before its petals are consumed."
"Here I came to the very edge where nothing at all needs saying, everything is absorbed through weather and the sea, and the moon swam back, its rays all silvered, and time and again the darkness would be broken by the crash of a wave, and every day on the balcony of the sea, wings open, fire is born, and everything is blue again like morning."
"Girl lithe and tawny, the sun that formsthe fruits, that plumps the grains, that curls seaweedsfilled your body with joy, and your luminous eyesand your mouth that has the smile of the water.A black yearning sun is braided into the strandsof your black mane, when you stretch your arms.You play with the sun as with a little brookand it leaves two dark pools in your eyes."
"But why give a man something it's so hard to earn? In that respect women are really thick. They're the daughters of rigidity. They need a man to feel secure but they don't realize that the one thing they should be afraid of is men. They don't know how to run their lives. They have to sacrifice themselves for the sake of someone else. Whores are the worst, patron, believe me. They throw their lives away working for some pimp, smile when he beats them, feel proud when he's well dressed, with his gold teeth and rings on his fingers, and when he goes off and takes up with a woman half their age they forgive him everything because 'he's a man."
"Beyond the earth and the shadowthe brightness of our love will stay alive."
"In times of conflict, war, poverty or religious fundamentalism, women and children are the first and most numerous victims. Women need all their courage today."
"For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time."
"You came to my lifewith what you were bringing,madeof light and bread and shadow I expected you,and Like this I need you,Like this I love you,and to those who want to hear tomorrowthat which I will not tell them, let them read it here,and let them back off today because it is earlyfor these arguments."
"There is no death, daughter. People die only when we forget them,' my mother explained shortly before she left me. 'If you can remember me, I will be with you always."
"I have named you queen.There are taller than you, taller.There are purer than you, purer.There are lovelier than you, lovelier.But you are the queen.When you go through the streetsNo one recognizes you.No one sees your crystal crown, no one looksAt the carpet of red goldThat you tread as you pass,The nonexistent carpet.And when you appearAll the rivers soundIn my body, bellsShake the sky,And a hymn fills the world.Only you and I,Only you and I, my love,Listen to it."
"And tell me everything, tell chain by chain, and link by link, and step by step; sharpen the knives you kept hidden away, thrust them into my breast, into my hands, like a torrent of sunbursts, an Amazon of buried jaguars, and leave me cry: hours, days and years, blind ages, stellar centuries."
"I cannot quit your love without dying."
"There's basically an element of fiction in everything you remember. Imagination and memory are almost the same brain processes. When I write fiction, I know that I'm using a bunch of lies that I've made up to create some form of truth. When I write a memoir, I'm using true elements to create something that will always be somehow fictionalized."
"I want to see thirstIn the syllables,Tough fireIn the sound;Feel through the darkFor the scream."
"I love you without knowing how, nor when, nor from where,I love you directly without problems or pride:I love you this way because I know no other way to love."
"You are like nobody since I love you."
"You, my friend, could be the smoke's daughter, you who may not have known you were born of fire and rage,lightning over flaming lava etched your violet mouth,your sex in the scorched oak's moss like a ring in a nest,your fingers there in the flames, your compact bodyrose from leaves of fire that make me recallthere were bakers in your family tree,you're still the rainforest's bread, ash from violent wheat."
"Women have always been courageous... They are always fearless when protecting their children and in the last century they have been fearless in the fight for their rights."
"He said that knowledge was of little use without wisdom, and that there was no wisdom without spirituality, and that true spirituality always included service to others. As he explained many times, the essence of a good physician consisted of a capacity for compassion and a sense of the ethical, without which qualities the sacred art of healing degenerated into simple charlatanism."
"Write with honesty and don't worry about the feelings of others, because no matter what you say, they'll hate you anyway."
"I was such a sullen, angry, sad kid. I'm sure there are writers who have had happy childhoods, but what are you going to write about? No ghosts, no fear. I'm very happy that I had an unhappy and uncomfortable childhood."
"I never said I wanted a 'happy' life but an interesting one. From separation and loss, I have learned a lot. I have become strong and resilient, as is the case of almost every human being exposed to life and to the world. We don't even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward."
"And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don't know how or when, no they were not voices, they were not words, nor silence, but from a street I was summoned, from the branches of night, abruptly from the others, among violent fires or returning alone, there I was without a face and it touched me."
"Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood."
"Give, give, give - what is the point of having experience, knowledge or talent if I don't give it away? Of having stories if I don't tell them to others? Of having wealth if I don't share it? I don't intend to be cremated with any of it! It is in giving that I connect with others, with the world and with the divine."
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