What most people call loving consists of picking out a woman and marrying her. They pick her out, I swear, Iโve seen them. As if you could pick in love, as if it were not a lightning bolt that splits your bones and leaves you staked out in the middle of the courtyard. They probably say that they pick her out because-they-love-her, I think itโs just the siteoppo. Beatrice wasnโt picked out, Juliet wasnโt picked out. You donโt pick out the rain that soaks you to a skin when you come out of a concert.
Julio CortazarI sometimes longed for someone who, like me, had not adjusted perfectly with his age, and such a person was hard to find; but I soon discovered cats, in which I could imagine a condition like mine, and books, where I found it quite often.
Julio CortazarBut what is memory if not the language of feeling, a dictionary of faces and days and smells which repeat themselves like the verbs and adjectives in a speech, sneaking in behind the thing itself,into the pure present, making us sad or teaching us vicariously.
Julio Cortazar