ŷ������

“Conversations consist for the most part of things one does not say.”
― Cees Nooteboom

“Memory is like a dog that lies down where it pleases.”
― Cees Nooteboom, Rituals

“Language is something you inherit, it's never just you doing the talking, which helps when you're pretending.”
― Cees Nooteboom

“I looked out of the window and saw him sitting in the early rays of the sun, a dark silhouette in the sand, motionless as a rock, and knew at once that I had substituted one memory for another and that this one would leave me with as little peace as the other one had. I would exist in someone else's mind, without knowing who I was in there.”
― Cees Nooteboom, Lost Paradise

“He read a lot, but what he read, and not just that but everything he saw, films and paintings, he translated into feeling. And this feeling, which could not immediately be expressed in words, not yet and maybe never, that formless mass of sentiments, impressions, observations �� that was his way of thinking. You could circle around it with words, but there always remained far more that was not expressed than was. And later, too, a certain resentment would take possession of him, toward those people who demanded precise answers, or pretended to be able to give them. It was, on the contrary, the very mystery of everything that was so attractive. You should not want to impose too much order on it. If you did, something would be lost irrevocably. That mysteries can become more mysterious if you think about them with precision and method, he did not yet know. He felt at home in his sentimental chaos. To chart it you had to be an adult, but then you were at once labelled, finished, and in effect already a little dead.”
― Cees Nooteboom, Rituals

“He thought that, unlike most people, he had simply refused to let himself be brainwashed by newspapers, television, eschatologies, and philosophies into believing that "in spite of everything" this was an acceptable world simply because it existed. It would never become acceptable. Beloved maybe, acceptable never.”
― Cees Nooteboom, Rituals

“We are our secrets, and, if all goes well, we will take them with us to where no-one can touch them.”
― Cees Nooteboom, 's Nachts komen de vossen

“Man is a sad mammal that combs its hair.”
― Cees Nooteboom, Rituals

“Herinnering is als een hond die gaat liggen waar hij wil.”
― Cees Nooteboom

“...a poem is only finished when the last reader has read it or listened to it.”
― Cees Nooteboom, All Souls' Day

“So-called real life has only once interfered with me, and it had been a far cry from what the words, lines, books had prepared me for. Fate had to do with blind seers, oracles, choruses announcing death, not with panting next to the refrigerator, fumbling with condoms, waiting in a Honda parked round the corner and surreptitious encounters in a Lisbon hotel. Only the written word exists, everything one must do oneself is without form, subject to contingency without rhyme or reason. It takes too long. And if it ends badly the metre isn't right, and there's no way to cross things out.”
― Cees Nooteboom, The Following Story

“Surely one zoo in the world should have the courage to draw the ultimate conclusion about our ancestry? A cage with Homo Sapiens in all its varying forms, perhaps then we would understand ourselves better. The question of course is whether the other animals would approve of it.
”
― Cees Nooteboom, Nomad's Hotel

“Ik zal afscheid nemen van mijn vrienden en weggaan zonder weg te gaan vanwege de herinneringen die ik meeneem en achterlaat en als ik terugkom zal alles anders zijn en toch hetzelfde en voorgoed veranderd.”
― Cees Nooteboom, Berlijnse notities

“Je wordt natuurlijk wel gelooid. De wereld is daar heel goed in. Iedereen begint met talent, iedereen heeft een kaarsje en dat brandt. De meeste mensen laten het uitgaan of het wordt door anderen wel uitgeblazen. Dat begint al vroeg. Een kind tekent een huis met een veel te grote zon. De verhoudingen kloppen niet, zegt de volwassene. Dan ben je al bezig aan de afbraak. Of een kind vertelt een verhaal dat niet klopt. Dat heb je gelogen, zegt een volwassene. Nee, het kind heeft het verzonnen. Je moet tegen elke wind in, in iedere storm, dat kaarsje zien aan te houden.”
― Cees Nooteboom

“La foto è il feticcio che ti dovrebbe riportare indietro il tempo, ma il guadagno coincide con la perdita: in cambio del ricordo di un te stesso precedente ricevi la consapevolezza di ciò che è definitivamente passato, dell'istante che non tornerà mai più mentre ciò che volevi era proprio fermarlo.”
― Cees Nooteboom

“When a memory fails to appear, it seems as though the time when it was created did not really exist, and maybe that is true. Time itself is nothing; only the experience of it is something. When that dies, it assumes the form of a denial, the symbol of mortality, what you have already lost before you lose everything. When his friend had said something similar to his father, his response had been, "If you had to retain everything, you’d explode. There’s simply not enough space for it all. Forgetting is like medicine; you have to take it at the right time.”
― Cees Nooteboom, Roads to Berlin

“Kummer hat etwas in den Linien deines Gesichts zu suchen, nicht in deiner Erinnerung.”
― Cees Nooteboom

“Wij hebben het nu over jou. Vergeet niet, ik ben notaris geweest. Ik maak die dingen altijd af. Wat wil jij worden?'
'Ik weet het niet.'
Hij begreep dat dat geen goed antwoord was, maar het was het enige, zelfs als iemand graag altijd alles afmaakte. Hij had geen flauw idee. Eigenlijk wist hij zeker dat hij nooit iets wou, maar ook nooit iets zóú worden. De wereld was al boordevol met mensen die iets waren, en de meesten waren er duidelijk niet gelukkig mee.”
― Cees Nooteboom, Rituals

“When Sartre says man has been thrown into the world, he is alone, there is no God, we are responsible for what we are, what we do, I say yes!"
The affirmative echoed around the woods. The dog pricked up his ears. This man has no one to talk to, thought Inni.
"But when he then asks me to be responsible for the world as well, for others, I say no! No. Why should I be? 'When man chooses himself, he chooses all men.' Why? I have not asked for anything. I have nothing to do with the vermin I see around me. I live out my time because I have to, that is all.”
― Cees Nooteboom, Rituals

“Die Welt ist ein einziger unaufhörlicher Querverweis.”
― Cees Nooteboom

“All right, she thought I was a funny little geezer, but my charred Phaethon had impressed her, I was very obviously available, and she was out for revenge. What makes Greek tragedies great is that this brand of psychological nonsense doesn't enter into it at all. I had wanted to tell her that too, but unfortunately conversations consist for the most part of things one does not say. We are descendents, we do not have mythical lives, but psychological ones. And we know everything, we are always our own chorus.”
― Cees Nooteboom, The Following Story

“Is that part of being a god, manifesting yourselves exclusively in forms of fiction, and making yourselves scarce when it matters?”
― Cees Nooteboom

“Wij zijn begonnen, wij zullen eindigen, en daartussen bestaan we, het heelal net zo goed als een geranium.”
― Cees Nooteboom, Rituals

“Y, sin embargo, cuando cae la noche y el espectáculo ha terminado, él y yo nos quedamos de nuevo solos con el silencio, solos con una infinita escasez de palabras; nunca imaginé que éstas pudieran ser tan parcas. Pero a mí todo me parece bien. ¿O acaso me engaño a mí misma? ¿Existe la pornografía sin porno? Mejor dicho, ¿existe la pornografía únicamente como concepto, sin representación gráfica alguna? Pura pornografía del espíritu, un estado en que la mentira transforma la naturaleza de cada acto -caricia, beso, orgasmo- en algo obsceno y perverso. Reflexiono sobre todas estas cosas, aquí, tendida en el suelo mientras espero que él pronuncie alguna de sus escasas palabras, a que vuelva a tocarme y yo a olvidarme de mis pensamientos.”
― Cees Nooteboom, Lost Paradise

“De wereld is één nooit ophoudende referentie.”
― Cees Nooteboom

“Guardare, ascoltare, leggere, il lavoro non finisce mai.”
― Cees Nooteboom

“What the East has given me is the thought that this I of mine is not so unique. Nothing much will be lost when it disappears. It isn't important. I am a hindrance to the world, and the world is a hindrance to me. There will only be harmony if I get rid of both at once. What dies in that case is a bundle of circumstances that bore my name, plus the limited and moreover constantly changing knowledge that these circumstances had about themselves. It doesn't matter to me. I have learnt not to be afraid. That in itself is quite a lot, and I am not capable of anything more. In a Zen monastery I would probably get the stick mercilessly, because it's all no good, but it satisfies me. What I have achieved is negative. I am no longer afraid, and I can quietly dissolve myself the way you dissolve a bottle of poison in an ocean. The ocean won't feel any ill effect, and the poison has been freed from a great burden; it does not have to be poison any more."
"And is that the only solution?"
"What I lack is love.”
― Cees Nooteboom, Rituals

“Zeitungen haben...zugleich etwas Solides und sogar bei der schlimmsten Nachricht etwas Beruhigendes: Die Welt existiert. Du bist gerade aufgewacht, zurückgekommen aus dem dunklen Reich des Schlafes, mach dir keine Sorgen, hier bin ich, schon frisch gebacken, ich rieche noch nach Druckerschwärze.”
― Cees Nooteboom

“La città è un libro, chi va in giro a passeggio il suo lettore. Può iniziare da una pagina qual siasi, può andare avanti o indietro nel tempo e nello spazio. Forse il libro ha un inizio, ma è ben lontano dall'avere una fine. Le sue parole sono frontoni, scavi, nomi, date, statue.”
― Cees Nooteboom

“Omnivore, omnifume, omniboit, omnivoit. Ne znaš odabrati, to je uvijek nedostatak izvrsnosti. Zato si ti svaštar. To je netko kome je sve lijepo. Život je za takve prekratak. Condition humaine to ne dopušta. Doista lijepim možeš smatrati samo ono u što se stvarno razumiješ. Onaj koji ne odabire, zaglavit će. Nemar, nedostatak pažnje, bez pravog razumijevanja ičega, prljava strana dilentatizma. Druga polovina dvadesetog stoljeća. Više šansi za sve. Više ljudi zna manje o više stvari. Širenje znanja na što široj razini. Tko se želi klizati, propada kroz led.”
― Cees Nooteboom