"Rather than finding a story that I want to tell and then adding the details, I collect the details and then try to construct a puzzle of story. I have a theme and a kind of mood and the characters but not a plotline that runs straight through"

“Às vezes parece que estamos vagando sem objetivo por uma cidade. Caminhamos pela rua, dobramos ao acaso em outra rua, paramos para admirar a cornija de um edifício, nos abaixamos para observar uma mancha de piche no asfalto que nos faz lembrar certos quadros que admiramos, olhamos para os rostos das pessoas que passam na rua, tentando imaginar a vida que carregam dentro delas, entramos num restaurante barato para almoçar, saímos e continuamos (...) talvez cantando para nós mesmos ao caminhar, ou talvez assobiando, ou talvez tentando nos lembrar de algo que esquecemos. Às vezes parece que não estamos indo a lugar algum enquanto caminhamos pela cidade, que estamos procurando um modo de passar o tempo, e que apenas o nosso cansaço nos dirá onde e quando devemos parar. Mas, assim como um passo leva inevitavelmente a outro, cada pensamento inevitavelmente também decorre do pensamento anterior, e no caso de um pensamento engendrar mais de um pensamento isolado (digamos, dois ou três pensamentos, equivalentes um ao outro em todas as suas conseqüências), será necessário não apenas seguir o pensamento até sua conclusão, como também remontar à posição original daquele pensamento para acompanhar o segundo pensamento até sua conclusão, e depois o terceiro pensamento e assim por diante, e dessa forma, se quisermos tentar criar uma imagem mental desse processo, uma rede de caminhos começa a se delinear, como na imagem da corrente sanguínea humana (coração, artérias, veias, capilares), ou como na imagem de um mapa (das ruas de uma cidade, por exemplo, de preferência uma cidade grande, ou mesmo de estradas, como nos mapas de postos de gasolina que se estendem, bifurcam e meneiam através de um continente), de modo que o que realmente estamos fazendo ao caminhar pela cidade é pensando, e pensando de tal forma que nossos pensamentos compõem uma jornada, e essa jornada não é mais nem menos que os passos que demos, de modo que, no fim, podemos dizer com segurança que estivemos numa jornada, e mesmo que não tenhamos saído do quarto foi uma jornada, e podemos dizer com segurança que estivemos em algum lugar, mesmo que não saibamos onde fica”

think less, react more.

"Yes you who must leave everything that you cannot control.
It begins with your family, but soon it comes around to your soul."

"All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority belong to the private-school stage of human existence where there are sides, and it is necessary for one side to beat another side."

"Tu n'as rien appris, sinon que la solitude n'apprend rien, que l'indifférence n'apprend rien: c'était un leurre, une illusion fascinante et piégée. Tu étais seul et voilà tout et tu voulais te protéger: qu'entre le monde et toi les ponts soient à jamais coupés. Mais tu es si peu de chose et le monde est un si grand mot: tu n'as jamais fait qu'errer dans une grande ville, que longer sur quelques kilomètres des façades, des devantures, des parcs et des quais.

L'indifférence est inutile. Tu peux vouloir ou ne pas vouloir, qu'importe! Faire ou ne pas faire une partie de billard électrique, quelqu'un, de toute façon, glissera une pièce de vingt centimes dans la fente de l'appareil. Tu peux croire qu'à manger chaque jour le même repas tu accomplis un geste décisif. Mais ton refus est inutile. Ta neutralité ne veut rien dire. Ton inertie est aussi vaine que ta colère."

"Indifference has not made you any different."

"The breath of the morning
I keep forgetting the smell of the warm summer air
I live in a town where you can't smell a thing
You watch your feet for cracks in the pavement

High up above aliens hover
Making home movies for the folks back home
Of all these weird creatures who lock up their spirits
Drill holes in themselves and live for their secrets

They're all uptight"

"Estava cansado de si mesmo, dos seus estéreis pensamentos e visões. A vida, um poema?... Não quando se passava a vida a poetar em vez de vivê-la. como ficava oca, então, como ficava vazia, vazia, vazia! Essa perseguição constante do próprio eu, no rastro das próprias pegadas – e em círculo, naturalmente...

Essa comédia simulada: fingir que se atira à corrente da vida e ao mesmo tempo ficar ali agarrado ao anzol, pescando-se a si próprio neste ou naquele curioso disfarce... Ah, se a vida quisesse submergi-lo... A vida, o amor, a paixão, de modo que ele não mais precisasse poetizá-la, porém apenas – em estado de poesia – vivê-la!"

"Ah, onde estou onde passo, ou onde não estou nem passo,
A banalidade devorante das caras de toda a gente!
Ah, a angústia insuportável de gente!
O cansaço inconvertível de ver e ouvir!"

the world is exploding inside my head.

"My thoughts are misguided and a little naive
I twitch and I salivate like with myxomatosis
You should put me in a home or you should put me down
I got myxomatosis
I got myxomatosis
Yeah no one likes a smart ass but we all like stars
But that wasn't my intention, I did it for a reason
It must have got mixed up
Strangled beaten up
I got myxomatosis
I got myxomatosis
I don't know why I
Feel so tongue-tied"

"I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous man, the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the man in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable."

"Uma pedra. Igual a si mesma, como só o são as naturezas inertes. As pessoas escorregam e, se num momento foram, no seguinte já não mais o são; a possibilidade de ser se reduz, contrai, escapa, ou num repente aumenta para explodir inesperada. As coisas se afirmam nelas mesmas em cada segundo de cada minuto. E em cada segundo futuro, serão ainda elas mesmas, sem se acrescentarem ou diminuírem. Para sempre, uma pedra será uma pedra. E por que então, enfim, esta palidez minha? Por que a encarava e pensava, e a constatava em sua permanência despida de mistérios e, no entanto, hesitava? Deveria compreendê-la no passar de olhos e ir adiante sem esperar. Contudo, esperava. De uma pedra -o quê? Se me machucava por dentro e quase tombava, meio aniquilado, impossível prosseguir. Derramar de ternura do vazio de minhas mãos, meus olhos quase verdes de tanto amor recusado, emoções informuladas pelo silêncio de noturna precisão -tudo convergindo para a pedra. Uma fatalidade, o inumano atingir o humano assim, de brusco? A nudez de meus pés devassava o frio. O vidro do rio, a lâmina do vento, a morte do sol. E a pedra. Inatingível."

"Nos parece cada vez más penoso andar, seguir la rutina; sospechamos que una sola noche de desatención sería funesta para las mancuspias la ruina irreparable de nuestra vida"

"Parece, portanto, que homens e mulheres falham igualmente. Parece que não conhecemos em absoluto uma opinião profunda, imparcial e absolutamente justa sobre nossos próximos. Ou somos homens, ou somos mulheres. Ou somos frios, ou somos sentimentais. Ou somos jovens, ou estamos envelhecendo. Em qualquer caso, a vida não é senão uma procissão de sombras, e sabe Deus por que as abraçamos tão avidamente e as vemos partir com tal angústia, já que não passam de sombras. E por que, se isso e muito mais é verdade, por que ainda assim nos surpreendemos no canto da janela com a inesperada visão de que o rapaz na cadeira é, entre todas as coisas do mundo, a mais sólida, a mais real, a que melhor conhecemos – sim, por quê? – Pois, no momento seguinte, já nada sabemos sobre ele".

"If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is."

"Nascerá então nos mais fracos, isto é, nos mais numerosos, um estado de espírito derrotista, instalando-se uma verdadeira indústria do pânico, do suicídio, uma indústria com seus criadores, seus consumidores, seus aproveitadores, suas vítimas, seus ideólogos.

Aí, como sempre, as soluções serão individuais. Os mais lúcidos, ao se anteciparem ao século XXI, adotarão, ainda que artificialmente, uma atitude positiva.

Ainda que não sejam os únicos responsáveis, políticos e publicitários contribuem para a crise com sua obsessão em corromper o vocabulário cotidiano.

A palavra ternura utilizada nos slogans tornou-se odiosa e inutilizável numa conversa sincera. A mesma coisa com a palavra sensibilidade.

Por causa dessas pessoas malfazejas e daninhas, preparemo-nos para viver sem ternura e sem sensibilidade, resistindo e rejeitando com um gesto firme sua mão estendida."

"We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies — all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes."

"I believe that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension that we find paralyzing because we no longer hear our surprised feelings living. Because we are alone with the alien thing that has entered into our self; because everything intimate and accustomed is for an instant taken away; because we stand in the middle of a transition where we cannot remain standing. For this reason the sadness too passes: the new thing in us, the added thing, has entered into our heart, has gone into its inmost chamber and is not even there any more, is already in our blood. And we do not learn what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing has happened, and yet we have changed, as a house changes into which a guest has entered. We cannot say who has come, perhaps we shall never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters into us in this way in order to transform itself in us long before it happens. And this is why it is so important to be lonely and attentive when one is sad: because the apparently uneventful and stark moment at which our future sets foot in us is so much closer to life than that other noisy and fortuitous point of time at which it happens to us as if from outside. The more still, more patient and more open we are when we are sad, so much the deeper and so much the more unswervingly does the new go into us, so much the better do we make it ours, so much the more will it be our destiny, and when on some later day it "happens" (that is, steps forth out of us to others), we shall feel in our inmost selves akin and near to it. And that is necessary. It is necessary and toward this our development will move gradually that nothing strange should befall us, but only that which has long belonged to us. We have already had to think so many of our concepts of motion, we will also gradually learn to realize that that which we call destiny goes forth from within people, not from without into them. Only because so many have not absorbed their destinies and transmuted them within themselves while they were living in them, have they not recognized what has gone forth out of them; it was so strange to them that, in their bewildered fright, they thought it must only just then have entered into them, for they swear never before to have found anything like it in themselves. As people were long mistaken about the motion of the sun, so they are even yet mistaken about the motion of that which is to come. The future stands firm . . . but we move in infinite space.

How should it not be difficult for us?"

"The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn’t."

"You look at me, you look at me closely, each time closer and then we play cyclops, we look at each other closer each time and our eyes grow, they grow closer, they overlap and the cyclops look at each other, breathing confusion, their mouths find each other and fight warmly, biting with their lips, resting their tongues lightly on their teeth, playing in their caverns where the heavy air comes and goes with the scent of an old perfume and silence. Then my hands want to hide in your hair, slowly stroke the depth of your hair while we kiss with mouths full of flowers or fish, of living movements, of dark fragrance. And if we bite each other, the pain is sweet, and if we drown in a short and terrible surge of breath, that instant death is beauty. And there is a single saliva and a single flavour of ripe fruit, and I can feel you shiver against me like a moon on the water."

"Com nuanças diferentes, percebemos a influência contínua, progressiva, tirânica que exerce a sociedade sobre nós; adivinhamos a parte do nosso ser que ela conquistou, as deformações que ela impôs a nosso eu; palpitamos por ser absorvidos pelo meio humano que nos cerca e saboreamos a voluptuosidade estranha que nos causa esta espécie de aniquilamento. Livres, apesar de nós, corpo e alma na cidade, passamos do arrebatamento à revolta. O abandono de si mesmo, que faz o encanto do amor, faz também o encanto da vida social."

"Anyone whose goal is ‘something higher’ must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves."

"citizens of the world
I renounce you.

I have
long ago.
but this is a formal
notice.
me against
you.
a restraining
order.

fuck off.
dry up.
vanish.

don't come to
my door
with pizza
pussy
or offers of
peace.

it's too late.

the music has
frozen in the
air
castrated by the
absence of your
presence."

"We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs."

e eles vivem com medo de sentirem algo real. medo de se perder, perder a racionalidade talvez.

e no se perder está o essencial.

"La rutina es el habito de renunciar a pensar."

"A linguagem é uma pele: esfrego minha linguagem no outro.É como se eu tivesse palavras ao invés de dedos, ou dedos nas pontas das palavras. Minha linguagem treme de desejo com a emoção de um duplo contato: de um lado, toda uma atividade do discurso vem discretamente, indiretamente,colocar em evidência um significado único que é: "eu te desejo" e liberá-lo, alimentá-lo, ramificá-lo,fazê-lo explodir; por outro lado, envolvo o outro nas minhas palavras, eu o acaricio,o roço, prolongo esse roçar e me esforço em fazer durar o comentário ao qual submeto a relação."

"Ao longo das horas, dos dias, das semanas, das estações, você se desprende de tudo, desliga-se de tudo. Descobre, às vezes, quase com uma espécie de embriaguez, que você é livre, que nada lhe pesa, nada lhe agrada nem desagrada.

(...)

Encontra-se, nesta vida, sem usura e sem outro estremecimento além dos instantes suspensos provocados pelas cartas ou certos ruídos, certos espetáculos que você concede a si mesmo, uma felicidade quase perfeita, fascinante, às vezes cheia de emoções novas. Você experimenta um repouso total, e constantemente poupado, protegido. Vive numa bem-aventurada digressão, num vazio cheio de promessas e do qual você nada espera.

(...)

Você é invisível, límpido, transparente. Você não existe mais: a sucessão das horas, dos dias, a mudança das estações, o escoamento do tempo, você sobrevive, sem alegrias e sem tristeza, sem futuro e sem passado, assim, simplesmente, evidentemente, como uma gota d’água que pinga na torneira de um patamar, como seis pés de meia de molho numa bacia de matéria plástica rosa, como uma mosca ou como uma ostra, como uma vaca, como um caracol, como uma criança ou como um velho, como um rato."

da ficção, há noites insones em diárias incessantes de hotéis estéreis.

do real, os fragmentos aleatórios e escassos de poros pouco acessíveis.

viver ilhado pode ser escolha, necessidade de desprendimento. porém toda ilha converte ao desmoronamento.

"This is the story of a man, marked by an image from his childhood. The violent scene that upset him, and whose meaning he was to grasp only years later, happened on the main jetty at Orly, the Paris airport, sometime before the outbreak of World War III.

Orly, Sunday. Parents used to take their children there to watch the departing planes.

On this particular Sunday, the child whose story we are telling was bound to remember the frozen sun, the setting at the end of the jetty, and a woman's face.

Nothing sorts out memories from ordinary moments. Later on they do claim remembrance when they show their scars. That face he had seen was to be the only peacetime image to survive the war. Had he really seen it? Or had he invented that tender moment to prop up the madness to come?

The sudden roar, the woman's gesture, the crumpling body, and the cries of the crowd on the jetty blurred by fear.

Later, he knew he had seen a man die.

And sometime after came the destruction of Paris.

Many died. Some believed themselves to be victors. Others were taken prisoner. The survivors settled beneath Chaillot, in an underground network of galleries.

Above ground, Paris, as most of the world, was uninhabitable, riddled with radioactivity.

The victors stood guard over an empire of rats.

The prisoners were subjected to experiments, apparently of great concern to those who conducted them.

The outcome was a disappointment for some - death for others - and for others yet, madness.

One day they came to select a new guinea pig from among the prisoners.

He was the man whose story we are telling.

He was frightened. He had heard about the Head Experimenter. He was prepared to meet Dr. Frankenstein, or the Mad Scientist. Instead, he met a reasonable man who explained calmly that the human race was doomed. Space was off-limits. The only hope for survival lay in Time. A loophole in Time, and then maybe it would be possible to reach food, medicine, sources of energy.

This was the aim of the experiments: to send emissaries into Time, to summon the Past and Future to the aid of the Present.

But the human mind balked at the idea. To wake up in another age meant to be born again as an adult. The shock would be too great.

Having only sent lifeless or insentient bodies through different zones of Time, the inventors where now concentrating on men given to very strong mental images. If they were able to conceive or dream another time, perhaps they would be able to live in it.

The camp police spied even on dreams.

This man was selected from among a thousand for his obsession with an image from the past. Nothing else, at first, put stripping out the present, and its racks.

They begin again.

The man doesn't die, nor does he go mad. He suffers.

They continue.

On the tenth day, images begin to ooze, like confessions.

A peacetime morning. A peacetime bedroom, a real bedroom. Real children. Real birds. Real cats. Real graves.

On the sixteenth day he is on the jetty at Orly. Empty.

Sometimes he recaptures a day of happiness, though different.

A face of happiness, though different.

Ruins.

A girl who could be the one he seeks. He passes her on the jetty. She smiles at him from an automobile. Other images appear, merge, in that museum, which is perhaps that of his memory.

On the thirtieth day, the meeting takes place. Now he is sure he recognizes her. In fact, it is the only thing he is sure of, in the middle of this dateless world that at first stuns him with its affluence. Around him, only fabulous materials: glass, plastic, terry cloth. When he recovers from his trance, the woman has gone.

The experimenters tighten their control. They send him back out on the trail. Time rolls back again, the moment returns.

This time he is close to her, he speaks to her. She welcomes him without surprise. They are without memories, without plans. Time builds itself painlessly around them. Their only landmarks are the flavor of the moment they are living and the markings on the walls.

Later on, they are in a garden. He remembers there were gardens.

She asks him about his necklace, the combat necklace he wore at the start of the war that is yet to come. He invents an explanation.

They walk. They look at the trunk of a redwood tree covered with historical dates. She pronounces an English name he doesn't understand. As in a dream, he shows her a point beyond the tree, hears himself say, "This is where I come from ..." - and falls back, exhausted. Then another wave of Time washes over him. The result of another injection perhaps.

Now she is asleep in the sun. He knows that in this world to which he has just returned for a while, only to be sent back to her, she is dead. She wakes up. He speaks again. Of a truth too fantastic to be believed he retains the essential: an unreachable country, a long way to go. She listens. She doesn't laugh.

Is it the same day? He doesn't know. They shall go on like this, on countless walks in which an unspoken trust, an unadulterated trust will grow between them, without memories or plans. Up to the moment where he feels - ahead of them - a barrier.

And this was the end of the first experiment.

It was the starting point for a whole series of tests, in which he would meet her at different times. Sometimes he finds her in front of their markings. She welcomes him in a simple way. She calls him her Ghost.

One day she seems frightened. One day she leans toward him. As for him, he never knows whether he moves toward her, whether he is driven, whether he has made it up, or whether he is only dreaming.

Around the fiftieth day, they meet in a museum filled with timeless animals. Now the aim is perfectly adjusted. Thrown at the right moment, he may stay there and move without effort.

She too seems tamed. She accepts as a natural phenomenon the ways of this visitor who comes and goes, who exists, talks, laughs with her, stops talking, listens to her, then disappears.

Once back in the experiment room, he knew something was different. The camp leader was there. From the conversation around him, he gathered that after the brilliant results of the tests in the Past, they now meant to ship him into the Future. His excitement made him forget for a moment that the meeting at the museum had been the last.

The Future was better protected than the Past. After more, painful tries, he eventually caught some waves of the world to come. He went through a brand new planet, Paris rebuilt, ten thousand incomprehensible avenues. Others were waiting for him. It was a brief encounter. Obviously, they rejected these scoriae of another time.

He recited his lesson: because humanity had survived, it could not refuse to its own past the means of its survival. This sophism was taken for Fate in disguise.

They gave him a power unit strong enough to put all human industry back into motion, and again the gates of the Future were closed.

Sometime after his return, he was transferred to another part of the camp. He knew that his jailers would not spare him. He had been a tool in their hands, his childhood image had been used as bait to condition him, he had lived up to their expectations, he had played his part. Now he only waited to be liquidated with, somewhere inside him, the memory of a twice-lived fragment of time.

And deep in this limbo, he received a message from the people of the world to come. They too traveled through Time, and more easily. Now they were there, ready to accept him as one of their own. But he had a different request: rather than this pacified future, he wanted to be returned to the world of his childhood, and to this woman who was perhaps waiting for him.

Once again the main jetty at Orly, in the middle of this warm pre-war Sunday afternoon where he could not stay, he though in a confused way that the child he had been was due to be there too, watching the planes.

But first of all he looked for the woman's face, at the end of the jetty. He ran toward her. And when he recognized the man who had trailed him since the underground camp, he understood there was no way to escape Time, and that this moment he had been granted to watch as a child, which had never ceased to obsess him, was the moment of his own death."

"It is rare that the feeling of absurdity is not followed by the feeling of necessity … it is rare that the feeling of necessity is not followed by the feeling of absurdity."

“Imagine: the mind exists isolated in a chaotic wasteland; four white walls, an even whiter ceiling and a floor that has no color surround it. It is this limitation that protects it from the harsh weather of insignificance that lies outside. Over time these walls slowly close in towards the center and when they meet they vanish along with everything else.”

"Why worry about terms and classifications. If surrealism comes naturally, from inside yourself, and you stay innocent, then it´s fine. A forced, affected surrealism would be horrible."

"Memory weaves and traps us at the same time according to a scheme in which we do not participate: we should never speak of our memory, for it is anything but ours; it works on its own terms, it assists us while deceiving us or perhaps deceives up to assist us."

"A compreensão humana não é um exame desinteressado, mas recebe infusões da vontade e dos afetos; disso se originam ciências que podem ser chamadas ciências conforme a nossa vontade. Pois um homem acredita mais facilmente no que gostaria que fosse verdade. Assim, ele rejeita coisas difíceis pela impaciência de pesquisar; coisas sensatas, porque diminuem a esperança; as coisas mais profundas da natureza, por superstição; a luz da experiência, por arrogância e orgulho; coisas que não são comumente aceitas, por deferência à opinião do vulgo. Em suma, inúmeras são as maneiras, e às vezes imperceptíveis, pelas quais os afetos colorem e contaminam o entendimento."

'Everything leads us to believe that there exists a certain point in the mind at which life and death, the real and the imaginary, the past and the future, the communicable and the incommunicable, the high and the low, construction and destruction, cease to be perceived in terms of contradiction. Surrealist activity, therefore, would be searched in vain for any other motive than the hope of determining this point '

"Às vezes me reprovam — injustamente, eu creio — por fazer filmes difíceis. Agora eu vou fazer um de fato. Aos que se aborrecem por não conseguir entender todas as insinuações, ou que admitem até mesmo não ter nenhuma idéia do que pretendo, eu apenas respondo que eles deveriam culpar sua própria esterilidade e falta de educação em vez de meus métodos; desperdiçaram o tempo deles na faculdade, compraram fragmentos estropiados de conhecimentos de segunda-mão"

"(...) People do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness. You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing. You're terrified somebody's going to stick you in a cage. Well, baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded by Tulip, Texas or Somaliland. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself."

"I just feel like all I do, all day long, is just manage myself, try to fuckin' connect with people. But it's like, no matter how much energy you pour into getting to the station on time, or getting on the right train, there's still no fuckin' guarantee that anybody's gonna be there for you to pick you up when you get there."

"Cada cinema de rua que fecha é o mesmo que uma biblioteca desativada ou uma praça pública depredada. Seja em São Paulo, ou pior ainda no interior, equivale a necrose da artéria da vida social da aldeia. Não vejo paliativos para 'salvar' patrimônios culturais enfermos e/ou ameaçados; a solução será sempre extrema. Tombamento já!"

"show li(v)es"

"De certa forma, medo é a filha de Deus, redimida na noite de sexta-feira santa. Ela não é bela, é zombada, amaldiçoada e renegada por todos. Mas não entenda mal, ela cuida de toda agonia mortal, ela intercede pela humanidade.

Pois há uma regra e uma exceção. Cultura é a regra. E arte a exceção. Todos falam a regra: cigarro, computador, camisetas, TV, turismo, guerra. Ninguém fala a exceção. Ela não é dita, é escrita: Flaubert, Dostoyevski. É composta: Gershwin, Mozart. É pintada: Cézanne, Vermeer. É filmada: Antonioni, Vigo. Ou é vivida, e se torna a arte de viver: Srebenica, Mostar, Sarajevo. A regra quer a morte da exceção. Então a regra para a Europa Cultural é organizar a morte da arte de viver, que ainda floresce.

Quando for hora de fechar o livro, Eu não terei arrependimentos. Eu vi tantos viverem tão mal, e tantos morrerem tão bem."

"That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is. Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending - perfoming. You get to love your pretense. It's true, we're locked in an image, an act - and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image, they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are."

"A photograph is nothing but a lie. The space is cut off, the time, manipulated. They are two uncontrollably false appearances of an image condemned to choose between hypocrisy ­ and good conscience ­ and being fake. The language used is often one of class: dominator but alienated, unaware of the actual matter at hand: appearance, ambiguity, the imaginary."

"... and the need to photograph it all, not so much the perceived act but more like a simple exposure to common and even extreme experiences… It is an inseparable part of photographic practice, in a certain sense, to grasp at existence or risk, desire, the unconsciousness and chance, all of which continue to be essential elements. No moral posturing, no judgement, simply the principle of affirmation, necessary to explore certain universes, to go deep inside, without any care."

"The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism."

"Remembering and forgetting are part of the same mental process. To write down one detail of an event is to not write down another (unless you keep writing forever). To remember one thing is to let another slip from remembrance (unless you keep recalling forever). There is ethical as well as violent forgetting. We can’t hold on to everything we’ve known so far. So the question is not whether we forget but what, or whom, we forget."

"o ser humano sente-se um estrangeiro no seu próprio habitat, porque é incapaz de compreender a existência e de se adaptar aos absurdos do viver social. o drama de joseph k., que é um pouco o drama de todo o homem lúcido, reside na consciência de que não pode viver só e não consegue intimamente conviver com os outros."

"acho que nós somos que nem corações cheios de sangue, iguais a copos de uísque cheios de sangue, loucos para serem bebidos. mas ninguém quer beber nosso sangue, só querem beber uísque. eu também bebi uísque porque não sabia que existiam copos de sangue, corações, para se beber, ou não queria acreditar"

"We all need someone to look at us. we can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. the first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. the second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. they are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. they are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. this happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. people in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. one day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. and finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. they are the dreamers."

"Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary."

“I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

“I got into bed, opened the bottle, worked the pillow into a hard knot behind my back, took a deep breath, and sat in the dark looking out of the window. It was the first time I had been alone for five days. I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me. I took a drink of wine.”

"She wanted to rise to a level that would allow her to leave behind the discomfort and heaviness… and the deep fatigue that had begun to seep into her bones."

"You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet."

"Criei em mim várias personalidades. Crio personalidades constantemente. Cada sonho meu é imediatamente, logo ao aparecer sonhado, encarnado numa outra pessoa, que passa a sonhá-lo, e eu não.

Para criar, destruí-me; tanto me exteriorizei dentro de mim, que dentro de mim não existo senão exteriormente. Sou a cena viva onde passam vários atores representando várias peças."

"I've always assumed that the abstract qualities of the photographs were very obvious. For instance, I can turn them upside down and they're still interesting to me as pictures. If you turn a picture that's not well organized upside down, it won't work."

"Farto também estou das tuas idéias claras e distintas a respeito de muitas outras coisas, e é só pra contrabalançar tua lucidez que confesso aqui minha confusão, mas não conclua daí qualquer sugestão de equilíbrio, menos ainda que eu esteja traindo uma suposta fé na "ordem", afinal, vai longe o tempo em que eu mesmo acreditava no propalado arranjo universal (que uns colocam no começo da história, e outros, como você, colocam no fim dela), e hoje, se ponho o olho fora da janela, além do incontido arroto, ainda fico espantado com este mundo simulado que não perde essa mania de fingir que está de pé."

"Há muito tempo que não só não escrevo, mas nem sequer existo. Creio que mal sonho. As ruas são ruas para mim. Faço o trabalho do escritório com consciência só para ele, mas não direi bem sem me distrair: por detrás estou, em vez de meditando, dormindo, porém estou sempre outro por detrás do trabalho.

Há muito tempo que não existo. Estou sossegadíssimo. Ninguém me distingue de quem sou. Senti-me agora respirar como se houvesse praticado uma coisa nova, ou atrasada. Começo a ter consciência de ter consciência. Talvez amanhã desperte para mim mesmo, e reate o curso da minha existência própria. Não sei se, com isso, serei mais feliz ou menos. Não sei (...)

Há muito tempo que não sou eu."

"You could say that we are like porridge. First we're like small oat flakes - small, dry, fragile, alone. But then we're cooked with the other oat flakes and become soft. We join so that one flake can't be told apart from another. We're almost dissolved. Together we become a big porridge that's warm, tasty, and nutritious and yes, quite beautiful, too. So we are no longer small and isolated but we have become warm, soft, and joined together. Part of something bigger than ourselves. Sometimes life feels like an enormous porridge, don't you think? Sorry, I'm standing around dreaming."

"Who said that time heals all wounds? It would be better to say that time heals everything - except wounds. With time, the hurt of separation loses its real limits. With time, the desired body will soon disappear, and if the desiring body has already ceased to exist for the other, then what remains is a wound, disembodied."

"The 'broken' buries itself deeper into memory than the 'whole'. The 'broken' has a kind of brittle surface which one's memory can grab hold to. On the clean surface of the 'whole', memory slips away."

"Not illustration of reality, but to create images which are concentration of reality, and a shorthand of sensation"

"Lives have many cycles but mine has only turned once and not completely... the most important thing is missing."

(Otto é um inverso em si. como tais dias)

"I don't know. It all depends on how i still see myself. Someone who plans to keep moving ahead implies that his previous self is a self that no longer exists, and he loses interest in it. On the other hand, the plans of others reject time and thereby create a strong bond with the past. It's true of almost all old people. They can't abide time for fear of wasting away. Everyone, in his heart of hearts..."

(de quelque chose)

"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery."

"I often imagine that the accident that made man into the animal he has become also happened to other animals—lions or hyenas for example—while man remained a primate. What would have happened? It’s bizarre, I have never read anything about it, by Darwin or anyone else. Perhaps it’s science fiction, but it’s very interesting. I imagine men hanging in butcher’s shops for hyenas, who would be dressed in fur coats. The men would be hung by their feet, or cut up for stew or kebabs."

"The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, of fear and pleasure; it’s a little like making love, the physical act of love."

"We are all prone to the malady of the introvert who, with the manifold spectacle of the world spread out before him, turns away and gazes only upon the emptiness within. But let us not imagine there is anything grand about the introvert's unhappiness."

abençoados os que não decorrem sobre a praga das madrugadas inertes e desérticas.

não o estrangeiro dentro de si, o estrangeiro do outro. de fronteiras não espalhadas por vazios ou por melancolia, e sim por outros.

o espetáculo reside nos pedaços de si espalhados em cada tentativa em vão de conexão ou aproximação.

"But I don't wish that I was dead
A very old friend of mine once said
That either way you look at it you have your fits
I have my fits but feeling is good
Confusions not a kiddney stone in my brain
But if were miscommunicating do we feel the same?
Then either way you look at it you have your fits
I have my fits but feeling is good

You gotta give a little you gotta get a little bit"

"To please the majority is the requirement of the Planet Cinema. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t make a concession to viewers, these victims of life, who think that a film is made only for their enjoyment, and who know nothing about their own existence."

"In my dreams I used to feel that I was being sucked into a huge hole. Now I feel I'm beng scattered in a thousand pieces. Before, even if it was a slow process, I would wake up all at once. Now I'm afraid there'll be pieces missing."

"Time will heal everything, but what if time was the illness?

"Por enquanto estou inventando a tua presença, como um dia também não saberei me arriscar a morrer sozinha, morrer é do maior risco, não saberei passar para a morte e pôr o primeiro pé na primeira ausência de mim - também nessa hora última e tão primeira inventarei a tua presença desconhecida e contigo começarei a morrer até poder aprender sozinha a não existir, e então eu te libertarei. Por enquanto eu te prendo, e tua vida desconhecida e quente está sendo a minha única íntima organização, eu que sem a tua mão me sentiria agora solta no tamanho enorme que descobri. No tamanho da verdade? Mas é que a verdade nunca me fez sentido. A verdade não me faz sentido! É por isso que eu a temia e a temo. Desamparada, eu te entrego tudo - para que faças disso uma coisa alegre. Por te falar eu te assustarei e te perderei? mas se eu não falar eu me perderei, e por me perder eu te perderia."

"The photo is the hunt, it’s the instinct of hunting without the desire to kill. It’s the hunt of angels… You trail, you aim, you fire and – clic! – instead of a dead man, you make him everlasting."

"Por não compreendermos a significação das palavras, nem eu nem meus amigos, uma coisa se tornou muito clara: que há maneiras de não compreender e que a diferença entre a não compreensão de um indivíduo e a não compreensão de outro cria um mundo de terra firma ainda mais sólido que as diferenças de compreensão. Tudo quanto outrora eu pensava ter compreendido desfez-se e eu fiquei como uma lousa limpa. Meus amigos, por outro lado, entrincheiravam-se mais solidamente na pequena vala de compreensão que haviam escavado para si próprios. Morreram confortavelmente em sua pequena cama de compreensão, para se tornarem cidadãos úteis do mundo. Senti pena deles e sem demora abandonei-os um a um, sem o menor pesar”.

"mas sem cinema a vida fica por uma linha; sem fotografia, fica-se pelo nada.

assim, entre a fotografia e o cinema vive a imagem e no seu fundo existimos nós. o cinema acaba por formar a nossa existência, a fotografia por confirmá-la – (nesta exposição), são as imagens ‘anteriores’ unidas às ’seguintes’ que nos fazem ver, tanto pelo que somos como pelo que queremos ser. no fundo, são as imagens, como todas as outras, que nunca se vêem pela primeira vez, como espelhos wellesianos caindo em sucessão, até nos ficarmos pelas imagens verdadeiras, entre o nosso cinema e a sua fotografia."

"Maybe it is worth investigating the unknown, if only because the very feeling of not knowing is a painful one."

"We have the notion that we exist but we have no way to prove it. 'I am' is the closest foundation we can get."

"O mundo é conduzido como um cilindro de borracha que cabe na mão; girando levemente à direita, todas as árvores são uma só árvore estendida à beira do caminho; então, gira-se um nada à esquerda, o gigante verde se desfaz em centenas de álamos que correm para trás, as torres de alta-tensão avançam pausadamente, uma a uma, a marcha é uma cadência feliz na qual já podem entrar palavras, fiapos de imagens que não as de uma estrada, o cilindro de borracha gira à direita, o som sobe e sobe, uma corda de som se estende insuportavelmente, mas já não se pensa mais, tudo é máquina, corpo pegado à maquina, e vento na cara como um esquecimento"

"Then it will be he, it will be I, it will be the place: the silence, the end, the beginning, the beginning again - how can I say it? That's all words, they're all I have - and not many of them: the words fail, the voice fails. So be it. I know that well. It will be the silence, full of murmurs, distant cries. The usual silence, spent listening, spent waiting, waiting for the voice. The cries abate, like all cries. (That is to say they stop.) The murmurs cease, they give up. The voice begins again (it begins trying again). Quick now before there is none left, no voice left, nothing left but the core of murmurs, distant cries: quick now and try again, with the words that remain. Try what? (I don't know, I've forgotten, it doesn't matter, I never knew.) To have them carry me into my story, the words that remain?"

"Por isso, hei de prosseguir na minha peregrinação, não para ir à procura de outra doutrina melhor, já que sei muito bem que não há nenhuma, senão para separar-me de quaisquer doutrinas e mestres, a fim de que possa alcançar sozinho o meu destino ou então morrer".

"It comes from a deep-rooted conviction that if there is anything worthwhile doing for the sake of culture, then it is touching on subject matters and situations which link people, and not those that divide people. There are too many things in the world which divide people, such as religion, politics, history, and nationalism. If culture is capable of anything, then it is finding that which unites us all. And there are so many things which unite people. It doesn't matter who you are or who I am, if your tooth aches or mine, it's still the same pain. Feelings are what link people together, because the word 'love' has the same meaning for everybody. Or 'fear', or 'suffering'. We all fear the same way and the same things. And we all love in the same way. That's why I tell about these things, because in all other things I immediately find division."

“In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comformable.”

"A única maneira de teres sensações novas é construíres-te uma alma nova. Baldado esforço o teu se queres sentir outras coisas sem sentires de outra maneira, e sentires de outra maneira sem mudares de alma. Porque as coisas são como nós as sentimos — há quanto tempo sabes tu isto sem o saberes? — e o único modo de haver coisas novas, de sentir coisas novas é haver novidade no senti-las.

Muda de alma. Como? Descobre-o tu.

(...)"

"Não o amor, mas os arredores é que vale a pena…

A repressão do amor ilumina os fenômenos dele com muito mais clareza que a mesma experiência. Há virgindades de grande entendimento. Agir compensa mas confunde. Possuir é ser possuído, e portanto perder-se. Só a ideia atinge, sem se estragar, o conhecimento da realidade."

"Mas é que a verdade nunca me fez sentido. A verdade não me faz sentido! É por isso que a temia e a temo. Desamparada, eu te entrego tudo - para que faças disso uma coisa alegre. Por te falar eu te assustarei e te perderei? Mas se eu não falar eu me perderei, e por me perder eu te perderia."

"Assim, temos personagens que devem ser considerados idênticos porque parecem semelhantes, iguais. Essa relação é acentuada por processos mentais que saltam de um para outro desses personagens pelo que chamaríamos telepatia -, de modo que um possui conhecimento, sentimentos e experiência em comum com o outro. Ou é marcada pelo fato de que o sujeito identifica-se com outra pessoa, de tal forma que fica em dúvida sobre quem é o seu eu (self), ou substitui o seu próprio eu por um estranho. Em outras palavras, há uma duplicação, divisão e intercâmbio do eu”.

"Eu acredito que o cinema tem vida própria. Especialmente quando se está editando, você precisa deixar que o filme te diga o que fazer. Você tem que estar aberto e não manter as coisas apenas em nome do roteiro, mas sim pela liberdade do público."

"Nobody, so far as I can see, is making use of those elements in the air which give direction and motivation to our lives (...) The age demands violence, but we are getting only abortive explosions. Revolutions are nipped in the bud or else succeed too quickly. Passion is quickly exhausted. Men fall back on ideas, comme d'habitude. Nothing is proposed that can last more than twenty four hours. We are living a million lives in the space of a generation."

"Não, não é cansaço...
É uma quantidade de desilusão
Que se me entranha na espécie de pensar,

(...)

Não, cansaço não é...
É eu estar existindo
E também o mundo,
Com tudo aquilo que contém,
Como tudo aquilo que nele se desdobra
E afinal é a mesma coisa variada em cópias iguais."

"Em algum lugar deve haver uma lixeira onde estão amontoadas as explicações. Uma só coisa inquieta neste justo panorama: que possa ocorrer o dia em que alguém consiga explicar também a lixeira."

"Há dois ou três anos, vivo num "sabor" diferente: como corpo estranho, e por esse mundo assim definido, tomo consciência da situação muito lentamente (...). Estou em meio a uma vida feita toda de músculos, virada pelo avesso como uma luva, que se explica sempre por uma daquelas canções que antes eu detestava, vida absolutamente desprovida de sentimentalismos, em organismo humanos sensuais que chegam quase a mecânicos (...) e nos quais o egoísmo assume formas líticas, viris (...). No mundo setentrional, onde vivi, havia sempre, ou ao menos assim me parecia, na relação entre os invidivíduos, uma sombra de piedade que se traduzia na timidez, no respeito, na angústia, na transferência afetuosa etc. Para se vincular numa relação amorosa, bastava um gesto, uma palavra. Prevalecia o interesse pela interioridade, pela bondade ou maldade que há dentro de nós (...). Aqui, entre esta gente, muito mais tomada pela irracionalidade, pela paixão, a relação é, por sua vez, muito bem definida e se baseia em fatos concretos: desde a força muscular até a posição social."

"The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all (...)"

"The cinema substitutes for our gaze a world more in harmony with our desires."

"O amor não foi feito para sermos felizes, mas para nos sentirmos vivos"

agosto sempre tem um gosto amargo de retorno a algo.

nem sempre real ou crível, em uma espécie de memória de fatos nem sempre armazenados ou nem sempre viciados.

(da emergência dos mares que pressentem o desabamento da costa)

"A câmera fotográfica singularizou o instante. E eis que automaticamente saí de mim para me captar tonta de meu enigma, diante de mim, que é insólito e estarrecedor por ser extremamente verdadeiro, profundamente vida nua amalgamada na minha identidade."

"People are fragile things, you should know by now

Be careful what you put them through

It breaks when you don't force it

It breaks when you don't try"

"I photograph only something that has to do with me, and I never did anything that I did not want to do. I do not do editorial and I never do advertising. No, my freedom is something I do not give away easily."