Quotessence
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Nina Berberova

Nina Berberova Books

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“Nella vita di ognuno esistono momenti - quando la porta sbattuta all'improvviso e senza alcun visibile motivo di colpo si riapre, quando lo spioncino chiuso un attimo fa viene di nuovo aperto, quando un brusco che sembrava irrevocabile si muta in -, momenti in cui il mondo intorno a noi si trasfigura, e noi stessi ci riempiamo di speranza come di nuovo sangue. E' stata concessa una proroga a qualcosa di ineluttabile, definitivo; il verdetto del giudice, del dottore, del console, è stato riviato. Una voce ci avverte che non tutto è perduto. E con gambe tremanti e lacrime di gratitudine passiamo nel locale adiacente, dove ci pregano di prima di spedirci nel baratro.”

“[On Paris:] It exists, constant, eternal, surrounding us who live in it, and it is in us. We love it or hate it, but we cannot escape it. It is a circle of associations in which man exists, being himself a circle of associations. Having entered it and come out of it we are not what we were before knowing it: it devoured us, we devoured it, and the problem is not did we or didn't we want it. We consumed each other. It courses in our blood.”

“I think that an anthill is better than a nest ... that in the anthill among a hundred thousand or a million you are freer than in a nest, where all sit around and look at one another, waiting until scientists finally discover ways to make us mind readers. ... the psychology of the nest is loathsome to me, and I always sympathize with one who flees his nest, even if he flees into an anthill, where it may be crowded but one can find solitude - that most natural, most worthy state of man, that precious and intense state of being conscious of the world and of oneself.”

“This is my main shortcoming: I was so determined not to lose time that I often did the wrong thing. Not losing time has been my permanent concern since I was three years old, when it dawned on me that time is the warp of life, its very fabric, something that you cannot buy, trade, steal, falsify, or obtain by begging.”