Portrait In Sepia Quotes
"Truth is short-lived, watered down by torrents of rain."
"This is a long story, and it begins before my birth; it requires patience in the telling and even more in the listening."
"His intention was generous and the method infallible, because at least for these first thirty years of my life, things have gone well."
"No one with an ounce of sense admits an infidelity, even if they catch you in bed."
"I’ve created plenty of scandal, it’s time to pay the piper."
"That’s where they’ll build towns, because there’s water, and in each one of those towns we will have a store."
"Why should we risk our own money if we can use someone else’s?"
"The idea of reincarnation terrifies me, Tao. Imagine if in my next life I turned out to be a Muslim."
"The embraces that once made them so happy turned into battles that culminated in long periods of truce."
"In every incarnation we must resolve what we left unfinished in the previous one."
"With her pastries, Eliza had from the beginning contributed to the upkeep of the family."
"Saving those creatures from a life of ignominy had become Tao Chi’en’s sacred mission."
"She needed independence to give her children the best American education."
"Lynn realized at an early age that the only place for Chinese was their quarter; they were detested in the rest of the city."
"Her parents never let her play outdoors, as they had her brother Lucky, because in Chinatown women and girls from proper families were recluses."
"Once Lynn understood the advantages of her beauty, she stopped cursing it."
"The surgical operations described in cruelest detail horrified him."
"Before she was nineteen, Lynn Sommers had rejected a number of suitors."
"Her languor was not elegance but laziness, and her melancholy shallowness, not mystery."
"She judged every one of them to be ordinary, unworthy of her."
"My grandfather, the patriarch Agustín del Valle, who had recently died, shrunken to the size of a chimpanzee but with his bad disposition intact."
"Matías’s indifference wasn’t feigned; in fact he didn’t notice the girl."
"My son is as surprised as I am. I’m sure we can work this out in a decent way, whatever’s right."
"The person hadn’t yet been born who could stand in her way."
"The camera can reveal secrets the naked eye or mind cannot capture; everything disappears except for the thing that is the focus of the picture."
"To triumph in this world you have to consider the results before you act."
"The important thing is to avoid scandal and close ranks around Matías. The family comes first."
"She was as pale as plaster and trembling so hard she seemed about to fall."
"The imperturbable Williams, who had come in at that moment to oversee the service of dessert, could not contain a quick smile of complicity before discreetly retiring."
"The camera is an exercise in observation, and the result is always a stroke of luck."
"I believe that you have suffered more than I. I am truly sorry about what happened to your wife."
"I want an interesting life, adventurous, different, passionate—in short, almost anything other than happy."
"War is too serious a matter to hand over to the military."
"Killing is easy, soldier, surviving is the hard part."
"You always have some excuse, Severo! So when has dying been an impediment to marriage?"
"If you have everything else you’re supposed to have, that doesn’t seem like very much, Severo."
"I shall pray that you fall in love again, and hope it will be me."
"Everyone in his place and a place for everyone."
"People don’t want handouts, they want a way to earn a living with dignity."
"With one hand I rake money in and with the other I give it out; that way I kill two birds with one stone. I have a good time, and I get to heaven."
"I’ve never again heard such impassioned discussions."
"Are you Catholic, Grandmother?" "Do you think it’s possible not to be, in Chile?"
"Her mind was unusual for her time and situation."
"Why not? People who have hellish upbringings are always more creative,"
"She taught me not to believe anything blindly, to doubt, and to question even what seemed irrefutably true."
"It doesn’t matter where you come from in this life, only where you’re going."
"Photography touched something deep inside me; I wanted to know the story of every one of them."
"It wasn’t mental ability I was lacking, just discipline."
"A woman has to work a thousand times harder than a man to win intellectual or artistic respect."
"Seriousness is his motto. He is passionate about life, and blindness has not prevented him from continuing to survey the world."
"Light is the language of photography, the soul of the world. There is no light without shadow, just as there is no happiness without pain."
"This wouldn't be the century of science and technology if every inventor thought about his own mortality."
"Vines are like people, Aurora; the more difficult the circumstances, the better the fruit."
"Photography as a personal testimony, a way of seeing the world, and that way must be honest, using technology as a medium for capturing reality, not distorting it."
"Conceit is a privilege of the ignorant; the wise man is humble because he knows how little he knows."
"I married Feliciano, I had three sons and a granddaughter. All the rest was just trimming."
"I find this young fellow to be rather unfeeling."
"Tools of the devil," Don Sebastián would say about technological advances.
"A blizzard of art and culture from France enlivened the atmosphere."
"The social crisis rocking the foundations of the nation."
"I don’t know whether by her own initiative or at the suggestion of that old augurer of fatalities."
"We wore scapulars of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on our chests to protect us from all evil, amen."
"I believe that finally I’m getting the change; now we’ll be able to make love without fear of having another baby."
"Paulina del Valle wasn’t a shadow of the woman she had been."
"My suspicions had begun months before, but I dismissed them, disgusted with myself."
"Spying on him, watch in hand, I began to be aware that my husband’s absences did not coincide with his explanations."
"The sun set at nine P.M., and the days were eternal."
"Diego never did; our relationship was damned from the start."
"We had been married a year, and I felt guilty."
"You will have other loves; perhaps you will be blessed with children."
"At heart I have always been a rover; what I want is to travel with no fixed course."