2 Quotes by Bernardo Atxaga

It's always a bad sign when we start thinking in numbers,' Joseba had said to me once, apropos a poem he was writing. 'When we're about to lose something good or something we really love, we start to count: only another so many days, we say. And the same thing happens when we're in a situation we don't like: we start to calculate how many days until the end. In either case, thinking in numbers is never good.

I think of the memory as being rather like a dam," he said, after a pause for thought. "It irrigates and gives life to our whole spirit. But, like a dam, it needs overflow channels if it's not to burst its banks. Because if it ever does overflow or burst, its waters will destroy everything in its path.