Bel Canto Quotes
"Maybe music could be transferred, devoured, owned."
"True life was kept safe in the lines of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin while you went out into the world and met the obligations required of you."
"The records he cherished, the rare opportunities to see a live performance, those were the marks by which he gauged his ability to love."
"He believed that life, true life, was something that was stored in music."
"It was early in the second act, when Rigoletto and Gilda sang together, their voices twining, leaping, that he reached out for his father’s hand."
"She thought it would be rude to step over someone."
"In Paris, Simon Thibault had loved his wife, though not always faithfully or with a great deal of attention."
"It was not that she was a very beautiful woman, if one could see her objectively, lying on a living-room floor."
"Even on this night, with the possibilities of their own deaths and the possibilities of liberation weighing heavily on their minds, they had noticed the smell of such a tiny, bell-shaped flower."
"What vanity on his part to think this was an appropriate gift. It was enough to listen to her recordings."
"He knew that he would never again see such concentration and compassion focused on his face even if he were to survive this ordeal and live to be a hundred."
"He was more inclined to believe that only a fool would not feel about her exactly how he felt."
"The opera pulls up from the tapestry rugs and the half-empty glasses of pisco sours in the living room, it moves away from specific birthdays and factory plans. It rises and turns above the host country until, gently, it lands on the stage, where it becomes its whole self, something distant and beautiful."
"Death was a holy mystery. Its timing was for God alone to decide."
"Nothing in the world was absolutely certain, not even Catholicism in these poverty-stricken jungles."
"Art is not sin. It’s not always good. But it is not a sin."
"People in the parish had a fondness for this young priest, the tireless vigor with which he polished the pews, the way he knelt in front of the candles for an hour every morning before first mass began."
"Their restlessness emboldened them, but there was this as well: nearly eighteen hours had passed and still no one was dead."
"If what a person wants is his life, he tends to be quiet about wanting anything else."
"The love they felt rose up into their throats and blocked the air."
"The kind of love that offers its life so easily, so stupidly, is always the love that is not returned."
"The truth was, she had hated the accompanist a little."
"The particular job he had been given this time was in fact more suited to the talents of a Vice President."
"That was either the power of the Church or the power of the opera singer leaning over the man they took to be her lover."
"The death of the accompanist had made them nervous."
"It was his home. He had to make some attempt to put it back towards the familiar so as to keep things bearable."
"It was better that way, to fly past it rather than to stop and wait and listen. Running, the music flew into him, became the wind that pushed back his hair and the slap of his own feet on the pavement."
"This was the learning of childhood. May I sit? May I stand? Thank you. Please."
"In short, when one looked out the window during the garúa all one really saw was the garúa itself, not day or night or season or place."
"To have gone from guns being pushed into backs to most of the guns being locked up in a broom closet should have taken no less than a year."
"His thoughts were entered, recorded, transmitted. It was in this simple repetition, the rediscovery of his own penmanship, that Mr. Hosokawa found solace."
"We are the handmaidens of circumstance, you and I."
"Sometimes, when it was very late, Gen would type up everything in Swedish without benefit of umlauts in an attempt to amuse himself, but he did not feel amused anymore."
"I don’t believe that anyone is entitled to hear my mistakes. But I doubt there would be much point in trying to arrange that here."
"The ones who were young and very poor worked just as hard, albeit at a different kind of work. There was wood to be cut or sweet potatoes to be dug out of the ground."
"It was the love and loneliness that each of them felt, that no one had brought himself to speak of."
"Their eyes clouded over with tears for so many reasons it would be impossible to list them all."
"The sound was no more beautiful when her voice was limber and warm."
"Every note was distinct. It was the measurement of the time which had gotten away from them."
"What she prayed for was nothing. She prayed that God would look on them and see the beauty of their existence and leave them alone."
"He was startled but not afraid. How odd that she was lying down, was all he thought."
"Her hand was cool and soft. It smelled of metal."
Teach me to read," she said quickly. "Teach me to make my letters in Spanish.
"There was no showy bravado in the movements of his arms."
"The woman you love is a girl who dresses as a boy and she lives in a village in a jungle."
"Love is a rebellious bird that no one can tame, and it's well in vain that one calls it if it suits it to refuse."
"The world should be a whirlpool of kissing into which we sank and never found the strength to rise up again."
"Once the plans were made, Carmen left Gen to watch television with the other soldiers."
"This will take me forever. Maybe a hundred years. At least I know I have the time."
"As for the love, what if there is nothing for me to give you?"
"Who knew that being kidnapped was so much like attending university?"
"I wish they would bring us some rabbits."
"If we are to believe there was a Julian at all."
"In another setting it would be ridiculous, too grand."
"He had stopped thinking of what he wanted most so many years ago, even when he was a child perhaps."
"He had been asked to come to her room at two A.M. and there was nothing more in the world to want, ever."
"He marveled at Gen, who took measured, peaceful breaths on the floor beside him."
"He pointed his toes. This was the hour."
"He opened up his hands and all of that fell away from him and he wanted nothing."
"He was afraid he would fall asleep and he knew he would never fall asleep."
"How right it was to climb! How happy he was to finally have the chance to risk himself."
"She was a beautiful girl. She was his own daughter."
"He tried to do what she told him, to place his foot exactly in the place her foot had left."
"He felt the corners of walls with his fingertips, avoided boards that creaked, could turn a doorknob as silently as a leaf falls."
"He was so proficient at moving through the house that he thought that even if he had no place to go he might be tempted to get up and stretch his legs, go from room to room just because he could."
"He was happy then, and every step he climbed he was happier."
"There wasn’t enough room for this much love and it left an aching sensation in his chest."
"Heartache! Who would have thought it was true? Now all he wanted was to take her hand or curve his arm around her shoulder."
"The only way things could work would be for everything to stay exactly as it was, for no one to speak of the future as if speaking of it could bring it on."
"The private life wasn’t forever. Maybe everyone got it for a little while and then spent the rest of their lives remembering."
"He was in love, and never had he felt such kindness towards another person."
"It was learning humility, to no longer assume that anyone would notice who you were or where you were going."
"She taught him how to get from place to place in the house in plain sight of everyone and yet no one saw them because she was teaching him to be invisible."
"The Generals are probably still over at the playing field."
"We have to talk them into surrendering."
"He was suddenly afraid that the General had received bad news."
"He felt something cold and startling move through his heart."
"He thought perhaps he shouldn’t bother them, but he had no idea how long they would be allowed to stay outside."
"How had he come to want to save all of them? The people who followed him around with loaded guns. How had he fallen in love with so many people?"
"All his life, Gen had worked to learn, the deep rolling R in Italian, the clutter of vowels in Danish."
"But these last months had turned him around and now Gen saw there could be as much virtue in letting go of what you knew as there had ever been in gathering new information."
"He forgot that the way he lived now would ever be over. And Gen wasn’t the only one."
"It was too much work to remember things you might not have again, and so one by one they opened up their hands and them let go."
"As soon as Roxane Coss fell in love, she fell in love again."
"She leaned against him, her arms around his neck, his hands flat against her back."
"In the morning she woke up for a minute, stretched, rolled over, and went back to sleep."
"They would have stood there all night, he would have left without ever asking for anything else if she hadn’t reached behind her at some point and taken one of his hands, led him there to her bed."
"He sang every line, every scale, as if the singing would save his life."
"There was not a man or woman there who did not acclaim his greatness."
"She sang with hypnotic passion and then with passionate lust."
"The rest went outside to play soccer or sit in the grass and watch the soccer game."
"When Roxane Coss screamed it was because she saw a man she didn’t recognize walking quickly into the room."
"The guns fired over and over and it was impossible to say if the ones who were dropping were trying to protect themselves or if they had been hit."
"She could feel his warm blood soaking her shirt, wetting her skin."
"The strangers cut the group apart as if they knew every member intimately."
"She felt afraid of them now, the people she knew."
"She closed her eyes and looked for her dark pile of sins, hoping she could release a few more on her own without the help of the priest."
"Gen saw Beatriz fall and called for Carmen. Where was Carmen?"
"Carmen was already dead, killed right at the start."
"Time, so long suspended, now came back with such force that it overlapped and everything happened at once."