10 quotes found
"The agarwood gave off its perfume, and the vine oil clouded over, invaded by the ghosts of other lives, from the time when it was just a dry seed under heaps of limestone. The knife, the same knife that I had gripped in my hands without feeling its hidden power, that had sent Dubois to Marseille, sparked by the unseen veins that still bound it to Chelyabinsk, had begun to do its work."
"The Book of Perilous Dishes"
"And I understood that not only was I fated to see them again, searching for each other with the same looks which clearly showed that love’s fiery sphere had started to grow between them, but there was also something else, meant only for me. Without wanting to, I had entered the realm of shadows, where you cannot be seen. They were the only ones that could be seen, while I, until then at the centre of the story, was now drifting through the treacherous fog of strange desires, like a poor fly blown about in the wind."
"The love is happiness to be only a rotting cloth in the wound of a stranger."
"The freedom is a tear digging into the flesh."
"Generous people are praised in books, but in everyday life they have nothing to show for it. The more grasping a person is, the wider doors open for them. No one loves the generous! They are admired for their praiseworthy deeds, and if they give you something, you accept it gratefully. But that’s as far as it goes. You don’t waste your time with a giver. You don’t go for a drink with them. You don’t make a philosophy of their gesture. And you don’t include them in your list of friends. Such a person is only good as a guarantor—the one who’s ready to stump up."
"For in any person there is a ball of bitterness and desire, sometimes just lightly tickling like a butterfly, but in many other cases utterly unbearable, like hot coals that scorch everything around them."
"Once he had turned the steak onto the other side, the madness began, as in a soul in love. Everything that followed after that, the salads, garnishes, and other accompaniments to the steak, was turned into the love letters, bouquets of flowers, and serenades by which men signal their desires and transmit news about the flow of their blood."
"Last year, sometime in November, I noticed a book in the window of the Sadoveanu"
"At last, she can sit down with the same emotion and anticipation felt before each meeting. The bed squeaks, recognizes her, and is happy to touch her. It is the only one that truly knows her, that deciphers the volutes of her brain and understands the delicate movements of the tiny creatures hidden in her capillaries. It took her 62 days to get here, to slide her fingers along its wooden surface, 62 suffocating days, the memories of which, although will fade, will leave toxins behind."