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Lorca Quotes

Browse 25 quotes about Lorca.

Lorca Quotes

“Seconds later, a girl emerged from the stairwell, her feet barely tapping the floor. I stepped back, shocked. She wasn't a fifty-year-old lady. She wasn't my daughter. She wasn't Robert either. She was fifteen, if that. Her cheeks were the color of brick. I opened the door. She was wearing a rain jacket, and her hands were hidden in her sleeves. "Sorry," she said. "The subway was so slow. I got out at Ninety-Sixth Street and walked." Her voice was deeper than I would have thought. She took off a hat that looked too big for her, all flaps and flannel. She was long-necked, reddish-haired, and freckled, but olive in the skin, as if she'd been shaded. Her eyes were light blue, like ancient sea glass. She took off her sneakers without using her hands and then leaned over and placed them neatly by the door. They were flat as pancakes, with shoelaces that didn't match. She was wearing socks with white bugs on them. She curled her toes when she saw me looking. "You know they eat them in Thailand?" she said. "Oven-baked with green curry." "Socks?" I asked. "No," she said and the sides of her cheeks lifted into a smile. "Crickets on my socks.”

“Lorca’s Spain: A Homage” Beginning with olive trees. Shadows. Beginning with roosters. Crystal. Beginning with castanets & almonds. Fishes. This is a homage to Spain. This mists dogs. This silences rubber. This is Saturn. Beginning with yellow. Eclipse. Beginning with needles. Insomnia. Beginning with baskets. The Moon. Who is naked? The imagination (wrote Lorca) is seared. This is a homage to water. Beginning & end.”

“Oh amapola roja que ves todo el prado, Como tú de linda yo quisiera ser! Pintas sobre el cielo tu traje encarnado Llorando el rocío del amanecer. Eres tú la estrella que alumbra a la aldea, Sol del gusanito buen madrugador. ¡Que cieguen mis ojos antes que te vea Con hojas marchitas y turbio color! ¡Quién fuera una hormiga para poder verte Sin que se tronchara tu tallo sutil! Yo siempre a mi lado quisiera tenerte Para darte besos con miel del abril. Pues mis besos tienen la tibia dulzura Del fuego en que vive mi rara pasión; Y hasta que me lleven a la sepultura Latirá por ti este corazón...”

“Federico García Lorca, poeta e intelectual muy vinculado a la República, había llevado el teatro a través de su compañía La Barraca a las zonas más desfavorecidas de los pueblos españoles. Nada más comenzar la contienda, había sido fusilado sin más contemplaciones. No existía delito; tampoco acusación. Quizás, la falta que había cometido y que le había costado la vida no estuviese aún recogida en los libros de leyes: la incomprensión. Muchos hombres y mujeres con nombres menos conocidos, descansaban en fosas comunes diseminadas por los caminos de España. (p. 117)”

“Those are juice glasses," she said. I smiled. "Right," I said. "This is how we drank it in Baghdad." I put down the steaming glass in front of her and wrapped the oven mitt around the bowl of bamia and brought that too, smelling it on the way. "Heaven," I said. I watched her as she ate until I caught myself. "I haven't made this in years," I said. Lorca lifted her shoulders, cocked her head, asking why. "I don't know," I said. "I should have. There's a saying in Arabic: Bukra fil mish mish. 'Tomorrow, when the apricots bloom.' Or, in other words, maybe tomorrow. I kept thinking that. I'd do it tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow." I was thinking of Lorca, of cooking again. But I thought of Joseph too. No more tomorrows with him.”

“We didn't have wooden stakes in the ground. We didn't have burning brushwood either. We didn't have fish from the Tigris or the Euphrates. We did have fresh red snapper from Citarella, which I butterflied down the back; tamarind paste from Fairway; hand-skimmed olive oil from Tunisia. We had a small fire when Victoria's sleeve brushed past the stove. And when I threw a glass of water at her, we had a fit of laughter so overpowering that I had to help her into a chair.”

“To be honest, I wasn't crazy about the kind of poetry I found in high school English books. I didn't get really excited about poetry until I discovered Lorca in college. If it wasn't for surrealism, I'm not sure I'd have become so involved in poetry. I was attracted by the extravagant imagery and elements of fantasy. This was in the '70s and it seemed to fit the psychedelic mood of the times. I found it liberating.”

“Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be encountered. Proust in Venice, Matisse's birdcages overlooking the flower market at Nice, Gide on the seventeenth-century quais of Toulon, Lorca in Granada, Picasso by Saint-Germain-des-Prés: there lies civilization and for me it can exist only under those liberal regimes in which the Present is alive and therefore capable of assimilating the Past.”