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The Sound of Things Falling QUOTES

The Sound of Things Falling QUOTES

1 " ...the nostalgia for things that weren't yet lost. "

― Juan Gabriel Vásquez , The Sound of Things Falling

2 " Experience, or what we call experience, is not the inventory of our pains, but rather the learned sympathy towards the pain of others. "

― Juan Gabriel Vásquez , The Sound of Things Falling

3 " There is no more disastrous mania, no more dangerous whim, than the speculation over roads not taken. "

― Juan Gabriel Vásquez , The Sound of Things Falling

4 " The world's a scary place these days. Grandpa,, you've seen worse things, haven't you? Please tell me the world has always been like this. "

― Juan Gabriel Vásquez , The Sound of Things Falling

5 " The saddest thing that can happen to a person is to find out their memories are lies. "

― Juan Gabriel Vásquez , The Sound of Things Falling

6 " Remembering tires a person out. this is something they don't teach us. Exercising one's memory is an exhausting activity. It draws our energy and wears down our muscles. "

― Juan Gabriel Vásquez , The Sound of Things Falling

7 " I read somewhere that a man should tell the story of his life at the age of forty, and this deadline is fast approaching as I write these lines, only a few short weeks remain before this ominous birthday arrives. "

― Juan Gabriel Vásquez , The Sound of Things Falling

8 " Adulthood brings with it the pernicious illusion of control, and perhaps even depends on it. I mean that mirage of dominion over our own life that allows us to feel like adults, for we associate maturity with autonomy, the sovereign right to determine what is going to happen to us next. Disillusion comes sooner or later, but it always comes, it doesn’t miss an appointment, it never has. "

― Juan Gabriel Vásquez , The Sound of Things Falling

9 " There is a faltering scream, or something that sounds like a scream. There is a sound that I cannot or have never been able to identify: a sound that's not human or is more than human, the sound of lives being extinguished but also the sound of material things breaking. It's the sound of things falling from on high, an interrupted and somehow also eternal sound, a sound that didn't ever end, that kept ringing in my head from that very afternoon and still shows no sign of wanting to leave it, that is forever suspended in my memory, hanging in it like a towel on a hook. That sound is the last thing heard in the cockpit of Flight 965. "

― Juan Gabriel Vásquez , The Sound of Things Falling

10 " The I realized no one wants to hear heroic stories, but everyone likes to be told about someone else's misery. "

― Juan Gabriel Vásquez , The Sound of Things Falling

11 " Now that so many years have passed, now that I remember with the benefit of an understanding I didn't then have, I think of that conversation and it seems implausible that its importance didn't hit me in the face. (And I tell myself at the same time that we're terrible judges of the present moment, maybe because the present doesn't actually exist: all is memory, this sentence that I just wrote is already a memory, this word is a memory that you, reader, just read). "

― Juan Gabriel Vásquez , The Sound of Things Falling

12 " In the darkness of the bedroom I thought of that, although thinking in the darkness is not advisable: things seem bigger or more serious in the darkness, illnesses more destructive, the presence of evil closer, indifference more intense, solitude more profound. "

― Juan Gabriel Vásquez , The Sound of Things Falling

13 " Uno es feliz hasta que la caga de cierta forma, luego no hay manera de recuperar eso que uno era antes "

― Juan Gabriel Vásquez , The Sound of Things Falling

14 " So you fell out of the sky, too?" the Little Prince asked the pilot who tells the story, and I thought yes, I'd fallen out of the sky, too, but there was no possible testimony of my fall, there was no black box that anybody could consult, nor was there any black box of Ricardo Laverde's fall, human lives don't have these technological luxuries to fall back on. "

― Juan Gabriel Vásquez , The Sound of Things Falling

15 " they talked of intentions and projects, convinced, as only new lovers can be, that saying what you wanted was the same as saying who you are. "

― Juan Gabriel Vásquez , The Sound of Things Falling

16 " the kind of sadness we tolerate because it appears at happy moments "

― Juan Gabriel Vásquez , The Sound of Things Falling

17 " her face was like a party that everyone had left. "

― Juan Gabriel Vásquez , The Sound of Things Falling

18 " No hay manía más funesta, ni capricho más peligroso, que la especulación o la conjetura sobre los caminos que no tomamos. "

― Juan Gabriel Vásquez , The Sound of Things Falling

19 " Θέλω να γευτώ τη σιωπή, σκέφτηκα τότε: ένα στίχο του Λεόν ντε Γκρεΐφ, ενός ακόμα από τους ποιητές που συνήθιζα ν' ακούω στο Σπίτι του Σίλβα - η ποίηση μας βρίσκει τις πιο απροσδόκητες στιγμές. "Θέλω να γευτώ τη σιωπή, / ανίατος από συντροφιά. / Αφήστε με μόνο. "

― Juan Gabriel Vásquez , The Sound of Things Falling

20 " I was also surprised by the alacrity and dedication we devote to the damaging exercise of remembering, which after all brings nothing good and serves only to hinder our normal functioning, like those bags of sand athletes tie around their calves for training. "

― Juan Gabriel Vásquez , The Sound of Things Falling