59 Quotes by Ismail Kadare

Every passion or wicked thought, every affliction or crime, every rebellion or catastrophe necessarily casts its shadow before it long before it manifests itself in real life.

Sunday had spread all over the city. It looked as if the sun had smacked into the earth and broken into pieces and chunks of wet light were scattered everywhere – in the streets, on the window panes, on puddles and roofs. I remembered a day long ago when Grandmother had cleaned a big fish. Her forearms were splattered with shiny scales. It was as if she had Sunday in her whole body. When my father got angry, he had Tuesday.

The days went by without incident and often without their name. When you’d unpacked the hours from the day and then the night and piled them all up, you could toss the boxes they came in, which is all that “Wednesday” or “Friday” really are.

I reckoned they had probably begun to pour out their hearts and entrust each other with the subjects of the plays and novels they had written or planned to write. It was customary after serious drinking.

The memories of events and statesmen paled as the years passed. Dust covered them, mud stained them, until they were finally erased as if they had never been. But recently people had come to understand that forgetting was more difficult and complicated than remembering.