Julio Cortazar Quotes

Quotes about:

• I think we all have a little bit of that beautiful madness that keeps us walking when everything around us is so insanely sane.

  Julio Cortazar

  Beautiful, Thinking, Littles

  186 Copy quote

• Only by living absurdly is it possible to break out of this infinite absurdity.

  Julio Cortazar

  Break Out, Infinite, Break

  Julio Cortazar (2016). “Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much”, p.14, Everyman's Library

  102 Copy quote

• In quoting others, we cite ourselves.

  Julio Cortazar

  Soul, Citing, Quoting

  90 Copy quote

• Come sleep with me: We won't make Love,Love will make us.

  Julio Cortazar

  Love, Relationship, Sleep

  155 Copy quote

• Only in dreams, in poetry, in play do we sometimes arrive at what we were before we were this thing that, who knows, we are.

  Julio Cortazar

  Dream, Play, Sometimes

  Julio Cortazar (2016). “Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much”, p.508, Everyman's Library

  137 Copy quote

• Of all our feelings the only one which really doesn't belong to us is hope. Hope belongs to life, it's life itself defending itself. Etcetera.

  Julio Cortazar

  Feelings, Etcetera, Hopscotch

  Julio Cortazar (2014). “Hopscotch: A Novel”, p.216, Pantheon

  146 Copy quote

• But what is memory if not the language of feeling, a dictionary of faces and days and smells which repeat themselves like the verbs and adjectives in a speech, sneaking in behind the thing itself,into the pure present, making us sad or teaching us vicariously.

  Julio Cortazar

  Memories, Teaching, Smell

  Julio Cortazar (2016). “Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much”, p.143, Everyman's Library

  125 Copy quote

• Memory is a mirror that scandalously lies.

  Julio Cortazar

  Memories, Lying, Past

  73 Copy quote

• What most people call loving consists of picking out a woman and marrying her. They pick her out, I swear, I’ve seen them. As if you could pick in love, as if it were not a lightning bolt that splits your bones and leaves you staked out in the middle of the courtyard. They probably say that they pick her out because-they-love-her, I think it’s just the siteoppo. Beatrice wasn’t picked out, Juliet wasn’t picked out. You don’t pick out the rain that soaks you to a skin when you come out of a concert.

  Julio Cortazar

  Life, Rain, Thinking

  173 Copy quote

• All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.

  Julio Cortazar

  Doors, Profound, Distraction

  116 Copy quote

• The evolution from happiness to habit is one of death's best weapons.

  Julio Cortazar

  Weapons, Evolution, Habit

  120 Copy quote

• Time is born in the eyes, everybody knows that.

  Julio Cortazar

  Time, Eye, Born

  102 Copy quote

• I sometimes longed for someone who, like me, had not adjusted perfectly with his age, and such a person was hard to find; but I soon discovered cats, in which I could imagine a condition like mine, and books, where I found it quite often.

  Julio Cortazar

  Book, Cat, Age

  101 Copy quote

• Human history is the sad result of each one looking out for himself.

  Julio Cortazar

  Selfishness, Results, Selfish World

  26 Copy quote

• As if you could pick in love, as if it were not a lightning bolt that splits your bones and leaves you staked out in the middle of the courtyard. (...) You don't pick out the rain that soaks you to the skin when you come out of a concert.

  Julio Cortazar

  Rain, Skins, Lightning

  Julio Cortazar (2016). “Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much”, p.473, Everyman's Library

  100 Copy quote

• Where are the beginnings, the endings, and most important, the middles?

  Julio Cortazar

  Important

  20 Copy quote

• After the age of 50 we begin to die little by little in the deaths of others.

  Julio Cortazar

  Age, Littles, Dies

  24 Copy quote

• She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste.

  Julio Cortazar

  Life, Writing, Opposites

  Julio Cortazar (2016). “Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much”, p.49, Everyman's Library

  97 Copy quote

• The novel wins by points, the short story by knockout.

  Julio Cortazar

  Winning, Stories, Knockouts

  88 Copy quote

• We no longer believe because it is absurd: it is absurd because we must believe.

  Julio Cortazar

  Believe, Absurd

  27 Copy quote

• Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word.

  Julio Cortazar

  Reality, Keys, Trying

  44 Copy quote

• Everything can be killed except nostalgia for the kingdom, we carry it in the color of our eyes, in every love affair, in everything that deeply torments and unties and tricks.

  Julio Cortazar

  Eye, Color, Kingdoms

  Julio Cortazar (2014). “Hopscotch: A Novel”, p.480, Pantheon

  46 Copy quote

• A short story relies on those values that make poetry and jazz what they are: tension, rhythms, inner beat, into unforeseen within foreseen parameters

  Julio Cortazar

  Stories, Jazz, Beats

  63 Copy quote

• We know that attention acts as a lightning rod. Merely by concentrating on something one causes endless analogies to collect around it, even penetrate the boundaries of the subject itself: an experience that we call coincidence, serendipity – the terminology is extensive. My experience has been that in these circular travels what is really significant surrounds a central absence, an absence that, paradoxically, is the text being written or to be written.

  Julio Cortazar

  Serendipity, Lightning, Attention

  83 Copy quote

• Skill alone cannot teach or produce a great short story, which condenses the obsession of the creature; it is a hallucinatory presence manifest from the first sentence to fascinate the reader, to make him lose contact with the dull reality that surrounds him, submerging him in another that is more intense and compelling.

  Julio Cortazar

  Reality, Skills, Stories

  69 Copy quote

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