6 Quotes by Hernán Díaz

After thousands of nights under those same stars, he woke up as many thousands of mornings under that same sun and trudged for as many thousands of days under the same sky, always feeling out of place.

The vastness around him was now his flesh. And yet, nothing -not the countless footsteps taken or knowledge acquired, not the adversaries bested or the friends made, not the love felt or the blood shed- had made it his.

There was a sky. There was a body. And a planet underneath it. And it was all lovely. And it did not matter. He had never been happy before. And it did not matter.

To him, English was still a mudslide of runny, slushy sounds that did not exist in his mother tongue – r, th, sh, and some particularly gelatinous vowels. Frawder thur prueless rare shur per thurst. Mirtler freckling thow. Gold freys yawder far cration. Crewl fry rackler friend thur. No shemling keal rearand for fear under shall an frick. Folger rich shermane furl hearst when pearsh thurlow larshes your morse claws. Clushes ream glown roven thurm shalter shirt.

They merely stood, completely absorbed by nothing. Time dissolved into the sky. There was little difference between landscape and spectators. Insensible things that existed in one another.

A year and an instant are equivalent in a monotonous life.