Macedonio Quotes & Sayings

In that instant, Gogolov feared death. He could feel himself falling through the dark void of space. He was flailing and terrified and utterly alone. He braced for impact, but it never came. He cried for mercy he would never see. He felt the searing heat and the demons ripping at his eyes and face with claws like razors. And then, in a terrifying flash of clarity, he realized it would never end. — Joel C. Rosenberg

Let the boy win his spurs. — Edward III Of England

A: Absorbed in our discussion of immortality, we had let night fall without lighting the lamp, and we couldn't see each other's faces. With an offhandedness or gentleness more convincing than passion would have been, Macedonio Fernandez' voice said once more that the soul is immortal. He assured me that the death of the body is altogether insignificant, and that dying has to be the most unimportant thing that can happen to a man. I was playing with Macedonio's pocketknife, opening and closing it. A nearby accordion was infinitely dispatching La Comparsita, that dismaying trifle that so many people like because it's been misrepresented to them as being old ... I suggested to Macedonio that we kill ourselves, so we might have our discussion without all that racket.
Z: (mockingly) But I suspect that at the last moment you reconsidered.
A: (now deep in mysticism) Quite frankly, I don't remember whether we committed suicide that night or not. — Jorge Luis Borges

Many women have been successful at breaking the glass ceiling only to find a layer of men. — Jane Harman

Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river. When the ocean is searching for you, don't walk into the river. Listen to the ocean. — Rumi

Reagan was conservative, but he didn't approach global management with an unbending religious zeal. — Randall Robinson

I'm drawn to women who live in a world different from my own. I don't believe you have to marry someone from your own backyard. James Joyce married a woman who never read any of his books. — Matt Dillon

It is easier to recount grievances and slights than it is to set down a broad redress of such grievances and slights. The reason is that one fears to be thought of as an arrant braggart. — Elizabeth Kenny

How short lived knowledge is. When I was 20 I knew it all: now at 70 I can't understand a thing — Macedonio Fernandez

Business leaders, social justice groups, farmers and ranchers, doctors and nurses and people from all walks of life are concerned about the climate threat. — Frances Beinecke

What will die with me the day I die? What pathetic or frail image will be lost to the world? The voice of Macedonio Fernandez, the image of a bay horse in a vacant lot on the corner of Sarrano and Charcas, a bar of sulfur in the drawer of a mahogany desk? — Jorge Luis Borges

To The Critics

Suicide has made more than one mediocre author glorious before he's able to achieve that sobering "second edition" making his a suicide that waits until it's justified. But I've taken more precautions against to Suicide which is to survive in the face of failure. Success is mostly editing, that's what makes things nice. To edit is the other great Power; thus this novel started at age 30, continued at 50 and its 73, has finally achieve supremacy: a person of Good Taste as the third author and as a result the editor of all three. In the end I'll be the author of a letter to the critics a sort of "open letter" but for the living: suicide is not something you can edit out. — Macedonio Fernandez

There are always some doubts when you do a new album though. You wonder whether you succeeded or not, especially when you waited as long as I did for this one - seven years. You're never really sure if it will be a nice record or not. — Eberhard Weber

You don't have to touch the ocean for the ocean to touch you — Sylvia Earle