63 Quotes by Valeria Luiselli

El problema con los criollos, y hasta en mayor grado con las criollas, es que están convencidos de que merecen una mejor vida de la que tienen. La mente criolla está convencida de que bajo la corteza del cráneo porta un diamante que alguien tendría que descubrir, pulir y poner en un cojín rojo, para que los demás se admiren, se pasmen, se den cuenta de lo que siempre se habían perdido.

He fell into a solemn silence, which he only eventually broke to say, “I think I’ve become a terrible person. In fact, I’ve become a reptile. Do you know that reptiles are stupid because almost their entire brain capacity is used to feel fear?

Our mother teach us to speak, and the world teaches us to shut up.

El final de las cosas, el verdadero final, no es jamás una nítida vuelta de tuerca, nunca una puerta cerrada de pronto, sino más bien algo parecido a un cambio atmosférico, nubes que se escapan poco a poco, .

The boy wakes me up: do you know where mosquitoes come from, Mama?

I’m the best auctioneer in the world, but no one knows it because ‘m a discreet sort of man.

Mouths open to the sun, they sleep.

Our penultimate lot, ladies and gentlemen, exudes an air of mystical melancholy. The tooth itself is crocodilian, but its aura is almost angelic. Note the curve; it is like a wing in ascent. Its owner, Mr. Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges, was a man of average height. His short, thin legs supported a torso, which was at once solid and svelte. His head was the size of a small coconut, and he had a slender, flexible neck. He was a pantheist.

There are things that can only be understood retrospectively, when many years have passed and the story has ended. In the meantime, while the story continues, the only thing to do is tell it over and over again as it develops, bifurcates, knots around itself. And it must be told, because before anything can be understood, it has to be narrated many times, in many different words and from my different angles, by many different minds.