42
" ALAN: (…) Lo que realmente somos es la longitud total de nosotros mismos, nuestro entero tiempo, y cuando llegamos al fin de esta vida, todos esos seres, todo nuestro tiempo serán nosotros… el verdadero tú, el verdadero yo (…).
KAY: (…) Olvidar que el tiempo no está devorando nuestras vidas… destrozando, arruinándolo todo… para siempre…
ALAN: No, todo está muy bien, Kay. Te buscaré ese libro. (Va hacia la puerta, pero se vuelve). Sabes, me parece que gran parte de nuestra preocupación nace de que consideramos al tiempo como el devorador de nuestras vidas. Por eso nos precipitamos los unos sobre los otros, y nos lastimamos mutuamente.
KAY: Como una escena de pánico en un barco que se hunde.
ALAN: Sí, exactamente así.
KAY (sonriéndole): Pero tú no haces esas cosas… ¡Tú eres tan bueno!
ALAN: Pienso que es más fácil no hacerlas, una vez que se ha adoptado un punto de vista más ámplio.
KAY: ¿Como si fueramos seres… inmortales?
ALAN (sonriendo): Sí, y lanzados a una magnífica aventura. "
― J.B. Priestley
47
" This looking at life properly, with no nonsense about you, and becoming a level-headed fellow, might be compared to attendance at a rather strange movie theatre. In there you are told to concentrate entirely upon the images shown on the screen. These are your world, your life. What is not shown on the screen ... is nothing. But you cannot help feeling that there is perhaps something else, not on the screen. Perhaps you hear a voice that is not coming from there and is much closer to your ear ... There are whispers and movements in the dark. Apparently there is a life all around you, not like the clear and ordinary imagery of the screen - a life fragmentary, mysterious, only to be guessed at, but somehow suggesting a fullness and richness of living not to be found in the existence of the lighted images. Indeed, this screen existence is beginning to seem repetitive and tedious; but one of its hollow-brass voices ... says that you have only to wait, taking care not to addle your wits with nothings ... But if you listen hard, another voice ... so close that it might be inside your head, whispers that what you are being told with such authority and complacency is nonsense, that the life around you in front of the screen is real and enduring, and that your nothings have always been SOMETHING. "
― J.B. Priestley , Man and Time
50
" A grey tide, engulfing all colour and shape of things that had been or were to be, rushed across his mind, sweeping the life out of everything and leaving him all hollow inside. Once again he sat benumbed in a shadow show. Yet as ever—and this was the cruel stroke—there was something left, left to see that all the lights were being quenched, left to cry out with a tiny crazed voice in the grey wastes. This was what mattered, this was the worst, and black nights and storms and floods and crumbling hills were not to be compared with this treachery from within. It wasn’t panic nor despair, he told himself, that made so many fellows commit suicide; it was this recurring mood, draining the colour out of life and stuffing one’s mouth with ashes. One crashing bullet and there wasn’t even anything left to remember what had come and gone, to cry in the mind’s dark hollow; life could then cheat as it liked, for it did not matter; you had won the last poor trick. Having conjured the malady into a phrase or two, Penderel felt better, came out of his reverie and looked about for entertainment. "
― J.B. Priestley , Benighted
52
" But the point is, now, at this moment, or any moment, we're only a cross-section of our real selves. What we really are is the whole stretch of ourselves, all our time, and when we come to the end of this life, all those selves, all our time, will be us--the real you, the real me. And then perhaps we'll find ourselves in another time, which is only another kind of dream. "
― J.B. Priestley , Time And The Conways