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Quote by Silvina Ocampo

“I have no memories. The angels will bring back all my memories on the day of my death. The cherubim will bring back the forms of all the faces. They will bring back all the hairstyles and ribbons, the positions of arms, past shapes of hands. The seraphim will bring me taste, sound, and fragrances, the flowers I received as gifts, landscapes. The archangels will bring back conversations and farewells, light, the silence of reconciliation.”

Quote by Silvina Ocampo

Book:Thus Were Their Faces
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Thus Were Their Faces

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Silvina Ocampo

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“When you die, the demons and the angels are equally eager, knowing that you are asleep, still in one world and partly in another, and will come in disguise to your bed, stroke your head, and ask you to choose the things you had preferred during your life. First, they will show you the simple things, as if opening a book of samples. If they show you the sun, the moon, or the stars, you will see them in a ball of painted crystal, and you will think the crystal ball is the world; if they show you the sea or the mountains, you will see them in a stone and will think the stone is the sea or the mountains; if they show you a horse, it will be a miniature figurine, but you will think the horse is a real horse. The angels and the demons will confuse your spirit with pictures of flowers, glazed fruit, and candies. Making you think you are still a child, they will seat you in a chair formed from their hands called the queen's chair, or the golden seat, and in this way they will carry you with their hands clasped through those hallways to the center of your life, where your favorite things are hidden. Be careful. If you choose more things from Hell than from Heaven, you may be sent to Heaven; on the other hand, if you choose more things from Heaven than from Hell, you risk going to Hell, because your love of celestial things could be a sign of greed. The laws of Heaven and Hell are flexible. Whether you're sent to one place or the other depends on the slightest detail. I know people who because of a broken key or a wicker birdcage went to hell, and others who for a sheet of newspaper or a glass of milk went to heaven.”

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Author:Silvina Ocampo
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“When I first arrived here, once I got over the shock, I thought I had entered a sort of purgatory. A second chance, you know. You can't imagine what it was like to be a man of-of my persuasion, in my time. Now it seems I've got another goal of it in an era that suits me better. But, you know, you can make yourself feel lonely and miserable and out of joint just by falling in love with someone who can't or won't love you back. Perhaps they'll fix that in another 200 years. Perhaps they'll come to get us and that's how we'll know we've reached heaven.”

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Book:The Ministry of Time
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