Lisbon QUOTES

1 " Lisbon, to me,
is the Lisbon of Pessoa.
Just like London is Woolf’s,
or rather, Mrs. Dalloway’s.
Barcelona is Gaudí's
and Rome is da Vinci’s.
You see them in every crevice
and hear their echoes
in every cathedral.
I’d like to be the child,
or rather, the mother of a city
but I neither have a home
nor a resting place.
My race is humankind.
My religion is kindness.
My work is love
and, well, my city
is the walls of your heart. "

― Kamand Kojouri

2 " At that moment Mr. Lisbon had the feeling that he didn't know who she was, that children were only strangers you agreed to live with, and he reached out in order to meet her for the first time. "

― Jeffrey Eugenides , The Virgin Suicides

3 " They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked higher than the pyramids; they had killed themselves over the failure to find a love none of us could ever be. In the end, the tortures tearing the Lisbon girls pointed to a simple reasoned refusal to accept the world as it was handed down to them, so full of flaws. "

― Jeffrey Eugenides , The Virgin Suicides

4 " Mr. Lisbon had the feeling that he didn't know who she was, that children were only strangers you agreed to live with. "

― Jeffrey Eugenides , The Virgin Suicides

5 " Mr. Lisbon knew his parental and neighborly duty entailed putting the retainer in a Ziploc bag, calling the Kriegers, and telling them their expensive orthodontal device was in safe keeping. Acts like theses -- simple, humane, conscientious, forgiving -- held life together. Only a few days earlier he would have been able to perform them. But now he took the retainer and dropped it in the toiler. He pressed the handle. The retainer, jostled int he surge, disappeared down the porcelain throat, and, when waters abated, floated triumphantly, mockingly, out, Mr. Lisbon waited for the tank to refill and flushed again, but the same thing happened. The replica of the boy's mouth clung to the white slope. "

― Jeffrey Eugenides , The Virgin Suicides

6 " On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide—it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese—the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope. "

― Jeffrey Eugenides , The Virgin Suicides

7 " But how conceive a God supremely good/ Who heaps his favours on the sons he loves,/ Yet scatters evil with as large a hand?

[Written after an earthquake in Lisbon killed over 15,000 people] "

― Voltaire , O Poema Sobre o Desastre de Lisboa

8 " They didn't exchange a single word. But in the weeks that followed, Trip spent his days wandering the halls, hoping for Lux to appear, the most naked person with clothes on he had ever seen. Even in sensible school shoes, she shuffled as though barefoot, and the baggy apparel Mrs. Lisbon bought for her only increased her appeal, as though after undressing she had put on whatever was handy. In corduroys her thighs rubbed together, buzzing, and there was always at least one untidy marvel to unravel him: an untucked shirttail, a sock with a hole, a ripped seam showing underarm hair. She carted her books from class to class but never opened them. Her pens and pencils were as temporary as Cinderella's broom. When she smiled, her mouth showed too many teeth, but at night Trip Fontaine dreamed of being bitten by each one. "

― Jeffrey Eugenides

9 " Dostoyevsky's indignation at Afanasy Fet's innocent lyrics, " Whispers, timid breath, the nightingales trilled," is well known. This is simply disgraceful, wrote Dostoyevsky indignantly, and he speculated what an insulting impression such empty verses would have made if they'd been given to someone to read during the Lisbon earthquake! Some people protested: Yes, of course, Dostoyevsky is right, but we aren't having an earthquake, and we aren't in Lisbon, and after all, are we not allowed to love, to listen to nightingales, to admire the beauty of a beloved woman? But Dostoyevsky's argument held sway for a long time. It did so because of the way Russians perceive Russian life: as a constant, unending Lisbon earthquake. "