You still waste time with those things, Lenu? We are flying over a ball of fire. The part that has cooled floats on the lava. On that part we construct the buildings, the bridges, and the streets, and every so often the lava comes out of Vesuvius or causes an earthquake that destroys everything. There are microbes everywhere that make us sick and die. There are wars. There is a poverty that makes us all cruel. Every second something might happen that will cause you such suffering that you'll never have enough tears. And what are you doing? A theology course in which you struggle to understand what the Holy Spirit is? Forget it, it was the Devil who invented the world, not the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Do you want to see the string of pearls that Stefano gave me?
Success depends on the capacity to manipulate the obvious with calculated precision.
Next to her, in the place where we were born, I was only a decoration, that is, I bore witness to Lila’s merits. Those who had known us from birth attributed to her, to the force of her attraction, the fact that the neighborhood could have on its streets an esteemed person like me.
We don't know anything about people, even those with whom we share everything.
How quickly people changed, with their interests, their feelings. Well-made phrases replaced by well-made phrases, time is a flow of words coherent only in appearance, the one who piles up the most is the one who wins.
The whole future---I thought---will be that way, life lives together with the damp odor of the land of the dead, attention with inattention, passionate leaps of the heart along with abrupt losses of meaning.
Voksne venter på i morgen, bevæger sig i en nutid bag hvilken der er i går eller i forgårs eller højst sidste uge: Resten vil de ikke tænke på. Børn kender ikke betydningen af i går, af i forgårs eller sågar af i morgen, alt er lige nu; gaden er den, døråbningen er den, trapperne er dem, det er mor, det er far, det er dagen, det er natten.
