Javier Marías quotes

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)
Life is a very bad novelist. It is chaotic and ludicrous. View quote
Javier Marías
A fool with the mind of a detective is an intelligent fool, a logical fool, the worst kind, because men's logic, far from compensating for their foolishness, only duplicates it, triplicates it, makes it dangerous. View quote
Javier Marías
...and a little later comes the question that no one asks before acting or before speaking: 'Do I dare disturb the universe?', because everyone dares to do just that, to disturb the universe and to trouble it, with their small, quick tongues and their ill-intentioned steps. View quote
Javier Marías
[He] would know many nights on which he would succumb to women whom a combination of over-eagerness and alcohol would make him think desirable, only to clutch his head in the morning on discovering that he had got into bed with some vast relative of Oliver Hardy's or with some flighty Bela Lugosi look-alike. View quote
Javier Marías
...she kept her arm raised and thus allowed me to observe her armpit, and when a naked woman allows you to do that, uncovering one or both, it's as if she were offering up to you an additional nakedness. View quote
Javier Marías
...and what gets me out of bed in the mornings continues to be the expectation of what might happen, all unannounced. I'm always expecting the unexpected, and I still fantasise about what might still be. View quote
Javier Marías
Everything that happens to us, everything that we say or hear, everything we see with our own eyes or we articulate with our tongue, everything that enters through our ears, everything we are witness to (and for which we are therefore partly responsible) must find a recipient outside ourselves and we choose that recipient according to what happens or what we are told or even according to what we ourselves say. View quote
Javier Marías
Everything persists and continues on its own, even if you yourself decide to withdraw. View quote
Javier Marías
Real togetherness in married couples and indeed in any couple comes from words, not just the words that are spoken – spoken voluntarily – but the words one doesn't keep to oneself – at least not without the intervention of the will. View quote
Javier Marías
Every illness is caused by something which is not an illness. (Javier Marías)
Never dismiss ideas born of the imagination, Jack, you only get to them after much thought, much reflection and study, and considerable boldness. View quote
Javier Marías
We always condemn ourselves by what we say, not by what we do. View quote
Javier Marías
According to us, the night belongs to the previous day. View quote
Javier Marías
We tend to be incredibly distrustful of our own perceptions once they have passed and find no outside confirmation or ratification, we sometimes renounce our memory and end up telling ourselves inexact versions of what we witnessed, we do not trust ourselves as witnesses. View quote
Javier Marías
What is truly unbearable is that the person one recalls as part of the future should suddenly become the past. View quote
Javier Marías
The person recounting here and now what he saw and what happened to him then is not the same person who saw those things and to whom those things happened. View quote
Javier Marías
He had an ability to surprise, as does every major idiot, and, of course, to irritate, all in the space of a single second. View quote
Javier Marías
Lies are lies, but all lies have their moment to be believed. View quote
Javier Marías
...possessed of more self-knowledge, which is the kind of knowledge that makes people attractive. View quote
Javier Marías
Sometimes it's impossible to explain the really important things, those that have affected us most deeply, and keeping silent is all that saves us in difficult times, because explanations almost always sound so lame with respect to the pain we have inflicted or that others have inflicted on us. (Javier Marías)
Everything is there on view, in fact, everything is visible very early on in a relationship just as it is in all honest, straightforward stories, you just have to look to see it, one single moment encapsulates the germ of many years to come, of almost our whole history. View quote
Javier Marías
Fidelity (the name given to the constancy and exclusivity with which one particular sex organ penetrates or is penetrated by another particular sex organ, or abstains from being penetrated by or from penetrating others) is mainly the product of habit, as is its so-called opposite, infidelity (the name given to inconstancy and change, and the enjoyment of more than one sex organ). View quote
Javier Marías
However dead a past love may be, new lovers are much...upset by them. View quote
Javier Marías
This is just a stopping-off point for me but I'll be stopping long enough to make it worth my while finding what people call 'someone to love. View quote
Javier Marías