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 CortazarOf all our feelings the only one which really doesn't belong to us is hope. Hope belongs to life, it's life itself defending itself. Etcetera.
Julio CortazarShe would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste.
Julio CortazarWordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word.
Julio CortazarThe mysterious does not spell itself out in capital letters, as many writers believe, but is always between, an interstice.
Julio CortazarWe know that attention acts as a lightning rod. Merely by concentrating on something one causes endless analogies to collect around it, even penetrate the boundaries of the subject itself: an experience that we call coincidence, serendipity โ the terminology is extensive. My experience has been that in these circular travels what is really significant surrounds a central absence, an absence that, paradoxically, is the text being written or to be written.
Julio Cortazar