Javier Marías Quotes

• Listening is the most dangerous thing of all, listening means knowing, finding out about something and knowing what’s going on, our ears don’t have lids that can instinctively close against the words uttered, they can’t hide from what they sense they’re about to hear, it’s always too late.

  Javier Marías

  Mean, Knowing, Listening

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• Life is a very bad novelist. It is chaotic and ludicrous.

  Javier Marías

  Novelists, Life Is, Chaotic

  "Javier Marías, The Art of Fiction No. 190". Interview with Sarah Fay in "The Paris Review", Issue 179, www.theparisreview.org. Winter 2006.

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• Illusions are important. What you foresee or what you remember can be as important as what really happens.

  Javier Marías

  Important, Remember, Illusion

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• We lose everything because everything remains except us. And therefore any form of posterity may be an affront, and perhaps any memory, as well.

  Javier Marías

  Memories, May, Form

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• It's so sad that no one writes down the things we go through, and even worse - no one will ever know about it, no one will ever see or hear about it, no one will ever be able to restore.

  Javier Marías

  Writing, Able, So Sad

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• The truth never shines forth, as the saying goes, because the only truth is that which is known to no one and which remains untransmitted, that which is not translated into words or images, that which remains concealed and unverified, which is perhaps why we do recount so much or even everything, to make sure that nothing has ever really happened, not once it's been told.

  Javier Marías

  Shining, Truth Is, Remains

  Javier Marías, Margaret Jull Costa (2000). “A Heart So White”, p.186, New Directions Publishing

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• We all have to lead our own life, and we only have the one life, and the only people who can live life not according to their own desires are those who have no desires--which is the majority, actually. People can say what they like, they can speak of abnegation, sacrifice, generosity, acceptance, and resignation, but it's all false. The norm is for people to think that they desire whatever comes to them, whatever they achieve along the way or whatever is given to them--they have no preconceived desires.

  Javier Marías

  Live Life, Acceptance, Sacrifice

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• People only get married when they've no other option, out of panic or desperation or so as not to lose someone they couldn't bear to lose. It's always the most conventional things that contain the largest measure of madness.

  Javier Marías

  People, Panic, Bears

  "A Heart So White" by Javier Marías, translated by Margaret Jull Costa, New Directions, (p. 121), 2002.

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• I have a tendency to want to understand everything people say and everything I hear, both at work and outside, even at a distance, even if it’s one of the innumerable languages I don’t know, even if it’s in an indistinguishable murmur or imperceptible whisper, even if it would be better that I didn’t understand and what’s said is not intended for my ears or is said precisely so I won’t understand it.

  Javier Marías

  Distance, People, Would Be

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• Not to gain time, but maybe to lose it, to see it pass.

  Javier Marías

  Gains, Loses

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• One of the best possible perspectives from which to tell a story is that of a ghost, someone who is dead but can still witness.

  Javier Marías

  Perspective, Stories, Ghost

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• Superstition is just another form of thought like any other, a form that accentuates and regulates the association of ideas, it's an exacerbation, an illness, but, in fact, all thought is sickness, which is why no one ever thinks too much, at least most people do their best not to.

  Javier Marías

  Thinking, Ideas, People

  Javier Marías, Margaret Jull Costa (1997). “Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me”, p.217, New Directions Publishing

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