One is ejected into the world like a dirty little mummy; the roads are slippery with blood and no one knows why it should be so. Each one is traveling his own way and, though the earth be rotting with good things, there is no time to pluck the fruits; the procession scrambles toward the exit sign, and such a panic is there, such a sweat to escape, that the weak and the helpless are trampled into the mud and their cries are unheard.
I had changed my francs into drachmas on the boat; it seemed like a tremendous wad that I had stuffed into my pocket and I felt that I could meet the bill no matter how exorbitant it might be. I knew we were going to be gypped and I looked forward to it with relish. The only thing that was solidly fixed in my mind about the Greeks was that you couldn’t trust them; I would have been disappointed if our guide had turned out to be magnanimous and chivalrous.
She stood there waiting for me to approach, as though absolutely certain that I would take her by the arm and continue strolling down the avenue.
The Greek knows how to live with his rags: they don’t utterly degrade and befoul him as in other countries I have visited.
I might say, in passing, that my life seems to have been one long search for the Mara who would devour all the others and give them significant reality.
Night has fallen. I’m no longer hungry. I have only an insane desire to be happy. That means I want to share my intoxication with you and everybody. That is maudlin.
Everybody goes the wrong way, everything is confused, chaotic, disorderly. But nobody is ever lost or hurt, nothing is stolen, no blows are exchanged. It is a kind of ferment which is created by reason of the fact that for a Greek every event, no matter how stale, is always unique. He is always doing the same thing for the first time: he is curious, avidly curious, and experimental. He experiments for the sake of experimenting, not to establish a better or more efficient way of doing things.
I like the monologue even more than the duet, when it is good. It’s like watching a man write a book expressly for you: he writes it, reads it aloud, acts it, revises it, savours it, enjoys it, enjoys your enjoyment of it, and then tears it up and throws it to the winds. It’s a sublime performance, because while he’s going through with it you are God for him – unless you happen to be an insensitive and impatient dolt. But in that case the kind of monologue I refer to never happens.
The moment I stepped on the American boat which was to take me to New York I felt I was in another world. I was among the go-getters again, among the restless souls, who, not knowing how to live their own life, wish to change the world for everybody.
Thyroid eyes. Michelin lips. Voice like pea soup.
Passing beneath the dance hall, thinking again of this book, I realized suddenly that our life had come to an end: I realized that the book I was planning was nothing more than a tomb in which to bury her – and the me which had belonged to her. That was some time ago, and ever since I have been trying to write it. Why is it so difficult? Why? Because the idea of an “end” is intolerable to me.
Europe – medieval, grotesque, monstrous: a symphony in B-mol.
Before I shall have become a man again I shall probably exist as a park, a sort of natural park in which people come to rest, to while away the time. What they say or do will be of little matter, for they will bring only their fatigue, their boredom, their hopelessness.
Dondequiera que fuese fomentaba la discordia: no porque fuera idealista, sino porque era como un reflector que revelaba la estupidez y futilidad de todo.
They would fight out of a sense of duty and without hatred. That is why France is strong and why she will rise again and resume her place in the world. France has been conquered but not defeated.
Music is still the antidote for the nameless... Music is planetary fire, an irreducible which is all sufficient; it is the slate-writing of the gods...
Suffering is futile, my intelligence told me over and over, but I went on suffering voluntarily.
Wine isn’t strong enough. It’s blood I want.
Can you stop dead, and without thinking, radiate the truth which you know?
It seems to me that everything dates from that aborted affair.