Arturo Quotes & Sayings

The American Negro must rebuild his past in order to make his future. Though it is orthodox to think of America as the one country where it is unnecessary to have a past, what is a luxury for the nation as a whole becomes a prime social necessity for the Negro. For him, a group tradition must supply compensation for persecution, and pride of race the antidote for prejudice. History must restore what slavery took away, for it is the social damage of slavery that the present generation must repair and offset. — Arturo Alfonso Schomburg

But one never knows how the dice will fall, and they are always cast before anyone even notices. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

And then it struck her that life was sometimes so beautiful that it didn't seem like life at all. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

To rise above the crowd, you must discipline yourself unceasingly to the strict demand and realities of your ambition. — Arturo Sandoval

It's so important to listen to music, to listen again and again. Eat, sleep and drink music. — Arturo Sandoval

The bartender put a notepad and a pencil before me. Breathing hard, the pencil trembling, I wrote:
Dear Sinclair Lewis:
You were once a god, but now you are a swine. I once reverenced you, admired you, and now you are nothing. I came to shake your hand in adoration, you, Lewis, a giant among American writers, and you rejected it. I swear I shall never read another line of yours again. You are an ill-mannered boor. You have betrayed me. I shall tell H. L. Muller about you, and how you have shamed me. I shall tell the world.
Arturo Bandini
P.S. I hope you choke on your steak. — John Fante

He'd have given a rare incunabulum, in good condition, to punch the face of whoever was writing this ridiculus script. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

He looked around at the books on the walls, at their dark, worn spines, and he seemed to hear a strange, distant murmur coming from them. each of the closed books was a door, and behind it stirred shadows, voices, sounds, heading toward him from a deep, dark place. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

All of them raced toward his house: Troy, Roger, Arturo, Sam, little Yessica, and to his surprise, Corina. They were yelling and motioning to him. "Go to the back gate! The back gate!" he shouted, and then he saw why they were running with such terrified expressions on their faces. They were being chased by zombified preschoolers around Drake's age. — Rhiannon Frater

It really doesn't bother me," she said. "I've always thought it stupid to try to hide your age, or to pretend to be younger than you are. Denying your age is like denying your life. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Because God and the devil could be one and the same thing, and everybody understood it in his own way. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Who are you?"
"The devil," she said. "The devil in love. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

The media are right now in the process of doing millions upon millions of dollars' worth of free PR work for whoever is doing this. Such over-the-top, wall-to-wall coverage just sets the bar higher and higher each time for the nut jobs and terrorists to get everybody's attention. "Which means bigger explosions, more bodies, and more atrocities. They should take their cue from the baseball media, which nipped fan stupidity in the bud when they wisely decided to stop showing people who run onto the field." "So don't tell people there's terrorism? That's your solution?" said Brooklyn. "How about at least not sensationalizing it so much?" Arturo said. "This is a bloodbath. Stop selling the frickin' popcorn. — James Patterson

It is not a profession to be a pianist and musician. It is a philosophy, a conception of life that cannot be based on good intentions or natural talent. First and foremost there must be a spirit of sacrifice. — Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli

An obscure flesh-and-blood Gascon, forgotten by History, transformed into a legendary giant by the novelist's genius — Arturo Perez-Reverte

divorced and living with an iguana, remarried with iguana, then divorced with seven iguanas because your iguana obsession ruined your relationship, and, finally, single with six iguanas (Arturo was sadly run over by an ice cream truck). — Aziz Ansari

The price of metaphor is eternal vigilance. — Arturo Rosenblueth

I'm afraid of wooden horses, cheap gin, and pretty girls. Especially when they give me presents. And when they go by the name of the woman who defeated Sherlock Holmes. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

You make a pact with life and death: so many years as a king, and then...Say what you will, dirty money spends as green as clean. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

I didn't have time to tell Bracken to care for her. I didn't have time to tell Arturo that I knew why he was hard on me, and it was okay. I didn't have time to tell Green that he was the sun and the moon and the stars. The Goddess gave me just enough time to feel her pain, to let her know I loved her. I had just long enough to say goodbye. — Amy Lane

Music is a right, but only for those who deserve it! — Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli

A woman is never just a woman dear Max. She is first and foremost the men she once had, those she has, and those she might have. Without them, she remains a mystery... and whoever discovers that information possesses the combination to the safe. The access to her secrets. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

He who kills from afar knows nothing at all about act of killing. He who kills from afar derives no lesson from life or from death; he neither risks nor stains his hands with blood, nor hears the breathing of his adversary, nor reads the fear, courage, or indifference in his eyes. He who kills from afar tests neither his arm, his heart, nor his conscience, nor does he create ghosts that will later haunt him every single night for the rest of his life. He who kills from afar is a knave who commends to others the dirty and terrible task that is his own. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

What about the future?"
"We'll talk about the future when it gets here. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

The ghosts of the people we could have been and weren't ... Isn't that what it is? The people we dreamed of being, until we were forced to wake from the dream." She was talking in a monotone, as if reciting from memory a lesson learned long ago. "The ghosts of those whom once we loved but never had, of those who loved us and whose hopes we destroyed out of malice, stupidity, or ignorance. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

They were all content - like pirates - to go around demanding favours as if this were their right; and all of them of course claimed to have the blood of the Goths flowing in their veins; and all were in pursuit of the dream nurtured by every Spaniard: to live without doing a stroke of work, to pay no taxes and to swagger about with a sword at their belt and a cross embroidered on their doublet. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

To write truthfully you must live, and you must feel what you are living. — Arturo Barea

I once wrestled with an angel. He won, but I learned a few things. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

A century from now," he murmured as he lifted a page and examined it against the light, closing one eye, "almost all the contents of today's libraries will have disappeared. But these books, printed two hundred or even five hundred years ago, will remain intact. We have the books, and the world, that we deserve. . . . Isn't that so, Pablo?" "Lousy books printed on lousy paper. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

The best model of a cat is another cat ... , specially the same cat. — Arturo Rosenblueth

Arturo Bandini was pretty sure that he wouldn't go to hell when he died. The way to hell was the committing of mortal sin. He had committed many, he believed, but the confessional had saved him. He always got to confession on time - that is, before he died. And he knocked on wood whenever he thought of it - he always would get there on time - before he died. So Arturo was pretty sure he wouldn't go to hell when he died. For two reasons. The confessional, and the fact that he was a fast runner. — John Fante

Disturbs me that there's a part of my heart or mind, or some spot where the two meet, a spot that isn't mine because I'm a wife. This part isn't really me at all, but a promise I made on a snowy day. A promise to stay and to be with Arturo and to be good to him, and when there's no other way, I have to go to that promise to find my feeling for my husband. We walk the finest of foolish, foolish lines. How can Webster still love Ted? How can anybody love anybody else for more than five minutes? — Helen Oyeyemi

My mother said, "Arturo, stop that. Your sister's tired."

"Oh Holy Ghost, Oh Holy inflated triple ego, get us out of the depression. Elect Roosevelt. Keep us on the gold standard. Take France off, but for Christ's sake keep us on!"

"Arturo, stop that"

"Oh Jehovah, in your infinite mutability see if you can't scrape up some coin for the Bandini family."

My mother said, "Shame, Arturo. Shame."

I got up on the divan and yelled, "I reject the hypothesis of God! Down with the decadence of a fraudulent Christianity! Religion is the opium of the people! All that we are or ever hope to be we owe to the devil and his bootleg apples!"

My mother came after me with the broom. — John Fante

Arturo Vega: I always thought the ONLY way to really conquer evil is to make love to it. My favourite dream is always the one where I face the devil. I'm in the nude and the devil appears, and he is a beautiful blue. He looks like a mannequin, he looks like a robot. He doesn't have any clothes on, of course, and he's blue and shiny. I keep hearing voices that say, "It's him! It's him!" And I go, "Okay."
So he comes and faces me and I look at him and he's a little taller than me, not much taller, but a little taller, and I say, "I like you." And he says, "I like you too." But he starts beating me up, RA RA RA RA, and I'm down on the floor - and then all of the sudden, he turns into a little baby, like a baby, just a few months old, and then I fuck him, ha ha ha ha. And while I'm fucking him, he's moving his hands, he's moving them like a helpless baby.
So I always thought that to conquer evil, you have to make love to it. You have to understand it. — Legs McNeil

And which devil do you prefer? Dante's?"
"No. Much too terrifying. Too medieval for my taste."
"Mephistopheles?"
"Not him, either. He's too pleased with himself. Too much a trickster, like a crooked lawyer ... Anyway, I never trust people who smile a lot."
"What about the one in The Karamazovs?"
"Petty. A civil servant with dirty nails. I suppose the devil I prefer is Milton's fallen angel. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

You don't choose your friends, they choose you, and you either reject them or you accept them without reservations. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

The most exciting fight I have called on HBO was the first meeting between Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward. When I stood up to do the post-fight on camera, my stomach muscles were tight and sore from the tension of watching them take their lives into their hands and trade shots. — Jim Lampley

God tells me how the music should sound, but you stand in the way. — Arturo Toscanini

All through dinner Arturo and I held hands under the table like a couple of kids, and that made the dinner quite wonderful, even though Mrs. Fletcher kept staring at Olivia as though committing her to memory. It got so bad that Olivia turned to her husband and said: Has it happened at last, Gerald? Have I become a curiosity? — Helen Oyeyemi

Becoming a book collector is like joining a religion: it's for life. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

The sea was cruel and selfish as human beings, and in its monstrous simplicity had no notion of complexities like pity, wounding, or remorse ... You could see yourself in it ... while the wind, the light, the swaying, the sound of the water on the hull worked the miracle of distancing, calming you until you didn't hurt anymore, erasing any pity, any wound, and any remorse. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

If you put forward arguments and justifications when you are annoyed, you give out more information to your opponent — Arturo Perez-Reverte

I hate you all because you destroy my dreams! — Arturo Toscanini

Breakfast was ready. He could hear his father asking for coffee. Why did his father have to yell all the time? Couldn't he talk in a low voice? Everybody in the neighborhood knew everything that went on in their house on account of his father constantly shouting. The Moreys next door - you never heard a peep out of them, never; quiet American people. But his father wasn't satisfied with being an Italian, he had to be a noisy Italian.
'Arturo,' his mother called. 'Breakfast.'
As if he didn't know breakfast was ready! As if everybody in Colorado didn't know by this time that the Bandini family was having breakfast! — John Fante

Careful, Arturo Bandini: don't strain your eyesight, remember what happened to Tarkington, remember what happened to James Joyce. — John Fante

Persistence is the virtue by which all other virtues bear fruit. — Arturo Graf

Ah, Evelyn and Vivian, I love you both, I love you for your sad lives, the empty misery of your coming home at dawn. You too are alone, but you are not like Arturo Bandini, who is neither fish, fowl nor good red herring. So have your champagne, because I love you both, and you too, Vivian, even if your mouth looks like it had been dug out with raw fingernails and your old child's eyes swim in blood written like mad sonnets. — John Fante

Later, with time, I learned that although all men are capable of good and evil, the worst among them are those who, when they commit evil, do so by shielding themselves in the authority of others, in their subordination, or in the excuse of following orders. And even worse are those who believe they are justified by their God. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

No Arturo, there never was a sea. You dream and you wish, but
you go on through the wasteland. You will never see the sea again. It was a
myth you once believed.-But, I have to smile, for the salt of the sea is in my
blood, and there may be ten thousand roads over the land, but they shall never
confuse me, for my heart's blood will ever return to its beautiful source. — John Fante

Actually loneliness has a kind of fascination; it's a state of egotistical, inner grace that you can achieve only by standing guard on old, forgotten roads that no one travels anymore. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Centuries of make-up that can be smudged by emotion have taught women to control their feelings. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Liberty, in my opinion, is the only orthodoxy within the limits of which art may express itself and flourish freely-liberty that is the best of all things in the life of man, if it is all one with wisdom and virtue. — Arturo Toscanini

To Strauss the composer I take off my hat; to Strauss the man I put it back on again. — Arturo Toscanini

Of all the universal lies she accepted unquestioningly, the happy ending was the most absurd. The hero and heroine lived happily ever after, and the ending seemed indisputable, definitive. No questions asked about how long love or happiness lasts in that 'forever' that can be divided into lifetimes, years, months. Even days — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Now you've seen a hero," he said. "And that's worth something." - Eckermann, CONVERSATIONS WITH GOETHE — Arturo Perez-Reverte

I have to play every day in order to keep absolute control over my form. — Arturo Sandoval

If you have no inner freedom, what kind of freedom do you expect? — Arturo Graf

He did not want to think, but it was inevitable that he would. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

During a rehearsal of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony the members of the orchestra were so overwhelmingly moved by the conducting of Arturo Toscanini that they rose as one man and applauded him. When the spontaneous cheering has subsided, Toscanini turned to his men, tears glistening in his eyes. "Please ... please! Don't do this! You see, gentlemen, it isn't me you should applaud. It's Beethoven!" — James Keller

Despite my youth I already suspected that it did no harm to keep my ears open. Just the opposite. In life, danger lies not in not knowing, but in revealing that you do: It is always good to have a sense of the music before the dance begins. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

The cricket was no more, but the power of love had found its way, and I was again myself and no longer a cricket, I was Arturo Bandini, and the elm tree yonder was Miss Hopkins, and I got to my knees and put my arms around the tree, kissing it for love everlasting, tearing the bark with my teeth and spitting it on the lawn. — John Fante

The Spaniard will become a worthless slave, devoid of soul, of reason, of virtue; forbidden by his inhuman jailers from ever seeing the light. An unfortunate wretch subjugated by men who are his equals but who, in his stupidity, his laziness, his superstition, he believes to be anointed by some higher power: these gods among men, wearing ermine and purple, black capes and cassocks, who under every sun and at every latitude will always exploit a man's foolishness in order to enslave him, to make him brutish and miserable, to sap his valor and his courage. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Blow your life through your horn. — Arturo Sandoval

I imagine he's married. Or was ... He seems damaged in the way that only we women can damage men. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Always that damned discipline that you wear like chain mail ... You would have got on well with Bernard de Clairvaux and his gang of Knights Templar. If you'd been captured by Saladin, I'm sure you'd rather have had your throat cut than renounce your faith. But not from devotion, from pride. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

When he stepped into the shower, the hit water scalded him. He let it run over his face, burning his eyelids. He put up with the pain, his jaw clenched and his muscles taut, suppressing the urge to howl with loneliness in the suffocating steam. For four years, one month, and twelve days, Nikon always got into the shower with him after they made love and soaped his back slowly, interminably. And often she put her arms around him, like a little girl in the rain. One day I'll leave without ever really knowing you. You'll remember my big, dark eyes. The reproachful silences. The moans of anxiety as I slept. The nightmares you couldn't save me from. You'll remember all this when I'm gone. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

The modern school without systematic lectures turns out many graduates who lack retention. No sooner has the sound of the word left their teacher's lips, the subject has been forgotten. — Arturo Alfonso Schomburg

As for me, all I know is that I know nothing. And when I want to know something, I look it up in books
their memory never fails — Arturo Perez-Reverte

There had been three priests, proponents of so-called liberation theology. They had opposed the reactionary tide from Rome. And in all three cases the IEA had done the dirty work for Iwaszkiewicz and his Congregation. Corona, Ortega, and Souza were prominent progressive priests working in marginal dioceses, poor districts of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo. They believed in saving man here on earth, not waiting for the Kingdom of Heaven. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Can't you read? The score demands 'con amore', and what are you doing? You are playing it like married men! — Arturo Toscanini

No fear is unbearable, she concluded, unless you've got time on your hands and a healthy imagination. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Everyone gets the devil he deserves. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

I know that I haven't invented anything myself, that I am only a mixture of countless influences, and thanks to that I am able to find my own style of playing. — Arturo Sandoval

To some it is Napoleon, to some it is a philosophical struggle, to me it is allegro con brio. — Arturo Toscanini

You can get used to anything, especially when you have no option. If you have to pay, you pay; it's just a question of attitude. At a particular moment in your life you adopt a certain position, whether mistaken or not. You decide to be like this or that. You burn your boats, and then all you can do is defend that position, come what may. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

It's a beautiful thing to refuse to forget... — Arturo Perez-Reverte

After I die, I shall return to earth as a gatekeeper of a bordello and I won't let any of you enter. — Arturo Toscanini

Arturo Bandini: -What does happiness mean to you Camilla?
Camilla: -That you can fall in love with whoever you want to,
and not feel ashamed of it. — John Fante

One is never alone with a book nearby, don't you agree? Every page reminds us of a day that has passed and makes us relive the emotions that filled it. Happy hours underlined in red pencil, dark ones in black ... — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Don Jaime relied on this to conserve what he defined as serenity: peace of mind and soul, the only fragment of wisdom to which human imperfection could aspire. His whole life lay before him, smooth, broad, and definitive, as untroubled by uncertainty as a river flowing to the sea. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

North American cinema is the only true weapon of mass destruction. It has achieved to convince the audience not only that it's the best possible cinema, but that it is the only. — Arturo Ripstein

[L]ife is like an expensive restaurant where, sooner or later, someone always hands you the bill, which is not to say that you should deny the joy and pleasure afforded by the dishes already eaten. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

It seemed to Don Jaime that you could find in the memory of every man the bittersweet shadow of a woman. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

If you want to please the critics, don't play too loud, too soft, too fast, too slow. — Arturo Toscanini

Sometimes," he said at last, as if it were an enormous effort to formulate his thoughts, "I wonder if chess is something man invented or if he merely discovered it. It's as if it were something that has always been there, since the beginning of the universe. Like whole numbers. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

A reader is the total of all he's read, in addition to all the films and television he's seen. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Court an idea as long as you like, but be careful before marrying it. — Arturo Graf

We need the historian and philosopher to give us with trenchant pen, the story of our forefathers, and let our soul and body, with phosphorescent light, brighten the chasm that separates us. We should cling to them just as blood is thicker than water. — Arturo Alfonso Schomburg

Real power is with those who are forever still, and I want to join them." "Good God. Why?" "Because I love them." "You mean like Hamlet jumping into the grave?" "Yes." "You can't do that!" Arturo screamed. "This is the twentieth century. And, besides, he jumped out." "He climbed out." "All right, he climbed out. Better that your soul should be on fire. It is on fire, and when you give it air it will flare like the sun. Even I ... My soul is on fire.... I, an accountant! — Mark Helprin

The knowledge and reason speak, ignorance and error shout. — Arturo Graf

But that is the way of life, and that was but one of the first times, among no few to come, that I was taught a useful lesson about how appearances trump truth, and how villains hide their vices behind masks of piety, honour, and decency. And that to denounce evildoers without proof, attack them with weapons, trust blindly in reason or justice, is often the fastest road toward one's own perdition, while the scoundrels who use influence or money as a shield remained untouched. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

When I was young, I kissed my first woman and smoked my first cigarette on the same day. Believe me, never since have I wasted any more time on tobacco. — Arturo Toscanini

But he was calm, like a hunter who is sure that he will catch his prey in the end, however confusing the trial. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

She had discovered with surprise and pleasure that as she turned each page, the book was written, as if for the first time, all over again. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

She loves you, loathes you, treats you well, then ill. Like a leech or a surgeon's knife, she's double-edged: sometimes she'll cure, but sometimes she will kill. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Films are for everyone, collective, generous, with children cheering when the cavalry arrives. And they're even better on TV: two can watch and comment. But your books are selfish. Solitary. Some of them can't even be read, they fall to bits if you open them. A person who's interested only in books doesn't need other people, and that frightens me — Arturo Perez-Reverte

You can do everything right, strictly according to procedure, on the ocean, and it'll still kill you, but if you're a good navigator, at least you'll know where you were when you died.
(In "The Nautical Chart" by Arturo Perez-Reverte) — Justin Scott

When it comes to politics and women, you have to taste all the sauces, but you must never let either one or the other give you indigestion. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

The world is full of banks and rivers running between them, of men and women crossing bridges and fords, unaware of the consequences, not looking back or beneath their feet, and with no loose change for the boatman. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

The pistol is not a weapon, it is an impertinence. — Arturo Perez-Reverte