Tu rostro mañana QUOTES

1 " People believe what they want to believe, and that's why it's only logical-and so easy-that everything should have its time to be believed "

― Javier Marías , Tu rostro mañana

2 " People say it far too much, 'I'll be eternally grateful' is one of the most vacuous statements ever uttered and yet one hears it often, always with that unvarying epithet, always that same irresponsible 'eternally', another clue to its absolute lack of reality, or truth or meaning "

― Javier Marías , Tu rostro mañana

3 " You're too much a man of your time, Jack, and that's the worst thing to be, because it's hard if you always feel other people's suffering, there's no room for manoeuver when everyone agrees and sees things the same way and gives importance to the same things, and the same things are deemed serious or insignificant. There's no light, no breathing space, no ventilation in unanimity, nor in shared commonplaces. You have to escape from that in order to live better, more comfortably. More honestly too, without feeling trapped in the time in which you were born and in which you'll die, there's nothing more oppressive, nothing so clouds the issue as that particular stamp. "

― Javier Marías , Tu rostro mañana

4 " Nowadays, enormous importance is given to individual deaths, people make such a drama out of each person who dies, especially if they die a violent death or are murdered; although the subsequent grief or curse doesn't last very long: no one wears mourning any more and there's a reason for that, we're quick to weep but quicker still to forget. I'm talking about our countries, of course, it's not like that in other parts of the world, but what else can they do in a place where death is an everyday occurrence. Here, though, it's a big deal, at least at the moment it happens. So-and-so has died, how dreadful; such-and-such a number of people have been killed in a crash or blown to pieces, how terrible, how vile. The politicians have to rush around attending funerals and burials, taking care not to miss any-intense grief, or is it pride, requires them as ornaments, because they give no consolation nor can they, it's all to do with show, fuss, vanity and rank. The rank of the self-important, super-sensitive living. And yet, when you think about it, what right do we have, what is the point of complaining and making a tragedy out of something that happens to every living creature in order for it to become a dead creature? What is so terrible about something so supremely natural and ordinary? It happens in the best families, as you know, and has for centuries, and in the worst too, of course, at far more frequent intervals. What's more, it happens all the time and we know that perfectly well, even though we pretend to be surprised and frightened: count the dead who are mentioned on any TV news report, read the birth and death announcements in any newspaper, in a single city, Madrid, London, each list is a long one every day of the year; look at the obituaries, and although you'll find far fewer of them, because an infinitesimal minority are deemed to merit one, they're nevertheless there every morning. How many people die every weekend on the roads and how many have died in the innumerable battles that have been waged? The losses haven't always been published throughout history, in fact, almost never. People were more familiar with and more accepting of death, they accepted chance and luck, be it good or bad, they knew they were vulnerable to it at every moment; people came into the world and sometimes disappeared at once, that was normal, the infant mortality rate was extraordinarily high until eighty or even seventy years ago, as was death in childbirth, a woman might bid farewell to her child as soon as she saw its face, always assuming she had the will or the time to do so. Plagues were common and almost any illness could kill, illnesses we know nothing about now and whose names are unfamiliar; there were famines, endless wars, real wars that involved daily fighting, not sporadic engagements like now, and the generals didn't care about the losses, soldiers fell and that was that, they were only individuals to themselves, not even to their families, no family was spared the premature death of at least some of its members, that was the norm; those in power would look grim-faced, then carry out another levy, recruit more troops and send them to the front to continue dying in battle, and almost no one complained. People expected death, Jack, there wasn't so much panic about it, it was neither an insuperable calamity nor a terrible injustice; it was something that could happen and often did. We've become very soft, very thin-skinned, we think we should last forever. We ought to be accustomed to the temporary nature of things, but we're not. We insist on not being temporary, which is why it's so easy to frighten us, as you've seen, all one has to do is unsheathe a sword. And we're bound to be cowed when confronted by those who still see death, their own or other people's, as part and parcel of their job, as all in a day's work. When confronted by terrorists, for example, or by drug barons or multinational mafia men. "

― Javier Marías , Tu rostro mañana

5 " No debería uno contar nunca nada, ni dar datos ni aportar historias ni hacer que la gente recuerde a seres que jamás han existido ni pisado la tierra o cruzado el mundo, o que sí pasaron pero estaban ya medio a salvo en el tuerto e inseguro olvido. Contar es casi siempre un regalo, incluso cuando lleva e inyecta veneno el cuento, también es un vínculo y otorgar confianza, y rara es la confianza que antes o después no se traiciona, raro el vínculo que no se enreda o anuda, y así acaba apretando y hay que tirar de navaja o filo para cortarlo. "

― Javier Marías , Tu rostro mañana

6 " How can I not know today your face tomorrow, the face that is there already or is being forged beneath the face you show me or beneath the mask you are wearing, and which you will only show me when I am least expecting it? "

― Javier Marías , Tu rostro mañana

7 " Nada peor que buscar el sentido o creer que lo hay. O sí lo habría, aún peor: creer que el sentido de algo, aunque sea del detalle más nimio, dependerá de nosotros o de nuestras acciones, de nuestro propósito o nuestra función, creer que hay voluntad, que hay destino, e incluso una trabajosa combinación de ambos. "

― Javier Marías , Tu rostro mañana

8 " You’ll always get the kind of person who watches himself acting, who
sees himself as if in some continuous performance. Who believes there’ll be witnesses to report his generous or
contemptible death and that this is what matters most. Or who, if there
are no witnesses, invents them — the eye of God, the world stage,
or whatever. Who believes that the world only exists to the extent that it’s reported and events only to the extent that they’re
recounted, even though it’s highly unlikely that anyone will
bother to recount them, or to recount those particular facts, I
mean, the facts relating to each individual. The vast majority
of things simply happen and there neither is nor ever was any
record of them, those we hear about are an infinitesimal fraction
of what goes on. Most lives and, needless to say, most deaths, are
forgotten as soon as they’ve occurred and leave not the slightest
trace, or become unknown soon afterwards, after a few years, a
few decades, a century, which, as you know, is, in reality, a very
short time. Take battles, for example, think how important they
were for those who took part in them and, sometimes, for their
compatriots, think how many of those battles now mean nothing to us, not even their names, we don’t even know which war
they belonged to, more than that, we don’t care. What do the
names Ulundi and Beersheba, or Gravelotte and Rezonville, or
Namur, or Maiwand, Paardeberg and Mafeking, or Mohacs, or
Nájera, mean to anyone nowadays?’ — He mispronounced that
last name, Nájera. — ‘But there are many others who resist, incapable of accepting their own insignificance or invisibility, I
mean once they’re dead and converted into past matter, once
they’re no longer present to defend their existence and to declare: “Hey, I’m here. I can intervene, I have influence, I can do
good or cause harm, save or destroy, and even change the course
of the world, because I haven’t yet disappeared.” — ‘I’m still here,
therefore I must have been here before, "

― Javier Marías , Tu rostro mañana

9 " a veces nos sucede eso con lo que se niega o se calla, con lo que se guarda y se sepulta, va difuminándose sin remedio y llegamos a descreer que en verdad existiera o se diera, tendemos a desconfiar increíblemente de nuestras percepciones cuando ya son pasado y no se ven confirmadas ni ratificadas desde fuera por nadie, renegamos de nuestra memoria a veces y acabamos por contarnos inexactas versiones de lo que presenciamos, no nos fiamos como testigos ni de nosotros mismos, sometemos todo a traducciones, las hacemos de nuestros nítidos actos y no siempre son fieles, para que así los actos empiecen a ser borrosos, y al final nos entregamos y damos a la interpretación perpetua, hasta de lo que nos consta y sabemos a ciencia cierta, y así lo hacemos flotar inestable, impreciso, y nada está nunca fijado ni es definitivo nunca y todo nos baila hasta el fin de los días, quizá es que no soportamos las certezas apenas, ni siquiera las que nos convienen y reconfortan, no digamos las que nos desagradan o cuestionan, o duelen, nadie quiere convertirse en eso, en su propio dolor y su lanza y su fiebre. "

― Javier Marías , Tu rostro mañana