All The Names Quotes
"Above the door frame is a long, narrow plaque of enamelled metal. The black letters set against a white background say Central Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths."
"As soon as you cross the threshold, you notice the smell of old paper."
"The duty of the members of each category is to do as much work as they possibly can, so that only a small part of that work need be passed to the category above."
"These are the shelves that carry the weight of the living."
"We all know that, however long old people may last, their hour will always come."
"For, and let us make this quite clear, the 'Senhor' is not worth quite what it might at first seem to promise."
"The only person who can question me is an official of the Central Registry of superior rank."
"In the name of the authority conferred on me... I declare to all those, be they civil or military, private or public, who might see, read and examine this letter."
"The only incriminating features were his fingerprints and the invisible traces of sweat that clung to the paper."
"Everyone knows that while it is true that you catch no flies with vinegar, it is no less true that some you can't even catch with honey."
"If one of the two commits adultery, the person who is most hurt, who receives the deepest cut, however incredible it may seem, is not the other person, but that other 'other' which is the couple."
"You'd be amazed how much you learn between fifty and seventy."
"Given the choice between killing something and letting it die, I chose killing, in the figurative sense, of course."
"It passes and we don't even notice, It was morning only a moment ago and now it's nearly dark."
"It's true that he hadn't even thought of doing something as simple and everyday as consulting the telephone book."
"It is the search that gives meaning to any find and that one often has to travel a long way in order to arrive at what is near."
"In this life we meet strangers all the time, and you just have to resign yourself to it."
"The Central Registry knew them all, knew their names, where they had been born and who their parents were."
"We can't go around asking everyone, 'What's your name?'"
"The birds don't know why they sing, but they still sing."
"He hadn't imagined that his face could possibly get into this state, filthy, furrowed with lines of sweat."
"He would have felt exactly the same and fled from this hollow-eyed phantom with a kind of black drool running from the corners of his mouth."
"In life, you can never be too careful, especially when you abandon the straight paths of honest behaviour."
"The dead people here aren't really dead, it's a macabre exaggeration to call this the archive of the dead."
"Meaning shows itself at once, direct, literal, explicit, enclosed in itself, univocal, while sense cannot stay still, it seethes with second, third and fourth senses."
"Loneliness, Senhor José, declared the Registrar solemnly never made for good company."
"Of the ten different shops he went into to ask questions, including the pharmacy, in only three of them did he find someone who claimed to remember the girl and her parents."
"If you have to experience terror, then rather sooner than later."
"The errors of copyists are the least excusable."
"What you must remember is that childhood nightmares never come true, far less dreams."
"Don't be afraid, the darkness you're in is no greater than the darkness inside your own body."
"You carry a darkness about with you all the time and that doesn't frighten you."
"The fact that psychological time is not the same as mathematical time was something that Senhor José had learned."
"Old photographs are very deceiving, they give us the illusion that we are alive in them, and it's not true."
"To the question, What were you doing on that day, he could give an almost immediate response."
"The day already contained twenty-four hours when it was determined how many hours it should have."
"There's nothing like a nice cup of tea for lifting the spirits."
"Happiness and unhappiness are just like famous people, they come and they go."
"Just as definitive death is the ultimate fruit of the will to forget, so the will to remember will perpetuate our lives."
"No life is without its lies, perhaps there's some deceit involved in this death as well."
"The little that remained unknown wasn't worth the effort of formulating another question."
"When you're old and realise that time is running out, you start imagining that you have the cure for all the ills of the world."
"You only become wise after seventy, and then it's no use to you anyway, not to you or anyone else."
"All the Names, although it should be said that, in fact, these three words fit the Central Registry like a glove."
"A silence interrupted only by the steps of the occasional sighing lover of solitude."
"A labyrinth is a kind of library which contains not books but buried people."
"The sadness they once gave rise to is now too old for there to be any surviving heirs."
"There are millions of them, he murmurs, then he thinks of the vast amount of space they would have saved if the dead had been buried standing up."
"To those three miles as the crow flies, you will have to add another two, or possibly three, traveling overland."
"No one ever died from going for a while without eating between meals."
"We came before our time was due, our own will brought us here."
"What lies beyond death, no one has seen nor ever will."
"That's a good question, there's no doubt about it, but only you can answer it."
"Metaphors have always been the best way of explaining things."