FLIGHTS
Translated by Jennifer Croft
"In spite of all the risks involved-a thing in motion will always be better then a thing at rest; that change will always be a nobler thing than permanence; that that which is static will degenerate and decay, turn to ash, while that which is in motion is able to last for all eternity." page 4
a true nomad. Page 6
"Immigrants still en route to that fair, idyllic country They were sure was somewhere in the West, where People are brother and sister, and a strong state plays the role of parents; figitives from their families - from their wives, their husband, their parents; the unhappily in love, the confused, the melancholic, those who were always cold." page 9
“... whenever I managed to save any money, I would be on my way again.” Page 10
"- all the little tricks we let ourselves perform - if instead we simply saw the world as it was, with nothing to protect us, honesty and courageously, it would break our hearts." page 12
“The only extravagance able to be afforded went to blood: blood is a warning, its redness an alarm that the casing of the body has been breached. That the continuity of the tissue has been broken. In reality, on the inside we have no color. When the heart pumps out blood as it's supposed to, blood looks just like snot.” page 22
"I feel as though these trains were just invented for people with a fear of flying.” page 61
"Escaping their own lives, and then being safely escorted right back to them." page 62
"They say that you have to sacrifice some living being when you build an airport she replied to ward off catastrophe." page 64
"But don't let yourself be taken in by the diversity. It's superficial," she said. "it's all smoke and mirrors. In reality, everywhere is the same. In terms of animals. In terms of how we interact with animals." page 66
"That man, wherever he may be born, so long as he be good, and wise, having wisdom in his soul, even diverging from us in form, color, voice, bearing, has inevitably descended from the first human forehead, Adam, and is thus capax for salvation." page 72
"Life is made up of situations." page 77
"You just have to show up, sign in at that one single configuration of time and place. There you will find your great love, happiness, a winning lottery ticket or the revelation of the mystery everyone's been killing themselves over in vain for all these years, or death. Sometimes in the morning one even has the impression that this moment is close by, that today might be the day it will arrive ." page 79
"Life aboard a ship is immersion not in Salt water, not in the rains over the northern seas, nor even in sunshine, but rather in adrenaline. There is no timetothink, no meditation over spilled milk." Page 84
"Because it must be noted that Chinese people have two names: one given by their families, used to summon the child, scold and punish him, but also the basis for affectionate nicknames. But when the child goes out into the world, he or she takes another name, an outside name, a world name, a personage name. " page 93
"If something hurts me, I erase it from my mental map. Places where I stumbled, fell, where I was struck down, cut to the quick, where things were painful- such places are simply not there any longer." page 97
"Night, then, quieted the raucous and aggressive news and weather and film channels, setting to one side the daytime ruckus of the world, bringing in instead the relief of the simple coordinate system of sex and religion. The body and the divine. psysiology and theology." page 101
"Words won't do justice to the harem's labyrinth. So Picture perhaps the cells of a honeycomb, the curved arrangement of intestines, the insides of a body, the canals of an ear; Spirals, deadends, appendixe, soft rounded tunnels that finish just here, at the entrance to a secret chamber." page 107
“Exhausted, I sat down by the window on the hard bench, facing the silent crowd of wax models, and let myself feel overwhelmed. What was the muscle of was squeezing my throat so tight? What was its name? who thought up the human body, and consequently, who holds its eternal copyright?” page 125
“what makes us mone human is the possession of a unique and irreproducible story, that we take place over time and kaue behind our traces. And yet, even if we did absolutely nothing for others - not for our ruler nor for our state - we would still have the right to be buried whit dignity, for burial is merely the act of returning to our Creator his creation, the human body.” Page 141
“ The tongue is the strongest muscle.” page 176
“There are 2 points of view in the world.The frogs perspective and bird's- eye view. Any point in between just leads to chaos.” page 178
“seeing after all, means knowing.” page 182
“There is only one thing we can not have - eternal life, and, by God, whence did that concept come into our heads, that idea of being immortal?” page 200
“Is my pain God?
I've spent my life traveling into my own body, into my own amputated limb. I've prepared The most accurate maps. I have dismatled the thing under investigation per the best methodology, breaking It down into prime factors. I've counted the muscles, tendons, nerves, and blood vessels. I've used my own eyes for this, but relie, too, on the cleverer vision of the microscope. I believe I have not missed even the smallest part.
Today, I can ask myself this question: What have I been looking for?” page 211
“Tales have a kind of inherent inertia that is never possible to fully control.They require people like me, insecure, indecisive, easily led astray. Naive.” page 212
“From experience she knows, however, that the best medicine for worrying is work, work for work's sake, which is its own pleasure and reward.” page 218
"Time elapses inside the plane but doesn't trickle out of it." Page 225 (Irkutsk-Moscow, FLIGHTS)
“ Over the world at night hell rises. The first thing that happens is it disfigures Space; it makes everything move cramped and move massive and unscalable. Details disappear and objects lose their features, becoming squat and indistinct;how strange that by day they may be spoken of the "beautiful" or "useful"; now they look like shapeless bodies: hard to guess what they'd be foe. Everything is hypothetical in hell...
The world in fact is dark, almost black. Motionless and cold.” page227
"Move. Get going. Blessed is he who leaves." page 260
“Then they learned from the icelanders that no real ill could have come to them: for lost souls like them the earth is able to bare its warm nipples. You just have to suck at them with gratitude and drink the earth’s milk .Apparently it tastes like milk of magnesium - What they sell in pharmacies for hyperacidity and heartburn. “ page 362
“Kairos is a minor god, the youngest child of Zeus. He is the spirit of the right moment—one that comes and vanishes.”
That smile of theirs holds - or so it strikes us - a kind of promise that perhaps we will be born anew now, this time in the right time and the right place. page 403
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