Quotes about Reflection

AND SINCE we're talking about nostalgia, I beg you to have a little patience with what follows because I can't separate the subject of Chile from my own life. My past is composed of passions, surprises, successes, and losses: it isn't easy to relate in two or three sentences.

People come and go, and even the closest members of the family eventually disperse. It's useless to cling to anybody or anything because everything in the universe tends toward separation, chaos, and entropy, not cohesion. I have chosen a simpler life, with fewer material things and more leisure, fewer worries and more fun, fewer social commitments and more true friendship, less fuss and more silence.

Are you afraid?" asked Alma. "No. I suppose that what comes after death is the same as before birth.

I was born in 1920, during the influenza pandemic, and I'm going to die in 2020, during the outbreak of coronavirus. What an elegant name for such a terrible scourge.

There's a time to live and a time to die. In between there's time to remember.

I am no longer tormented by an excess of discipline, as I was before.

Irina could not imagine the courage it took to grow old without becoming too frightened; her knowledge of age

Carme told them she couldn't remember what she felt, but she realized it's hard to die, and to invite death is cowardice.

the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously—

You explained to me that inspiration is born of stillness, and creativity comes from movement.

In the middle of that year I had a spectacular dream, and I wrote it down to tell my mother; we always did that, even though there's nothing as boring as listening to other people's dreams. That's

Years sneak by quickly, on tip-toe, scoffing and suddenly they give us a fright in the mirror or smack us on the back. Every minute is precious and we can't waste it on misunderstanding, impatience, jealousy, pettiness, or the other silly stuff that soils relationships. In truth this formula can be applied at any age because it's always the case that our days are limited.