I have a tendency to want to understand everything people say and everything I hear, both at work … - Javier Marías

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Quote of the day

You can't improve sound by having only silence. The problem is to use each at the proper time.

Javier Marías

I have a tendency to want to understand everything people say and everything I hear, both at work and outside, even at a distance, even if it’s one of the innumerable languages I don’t know, even if it’s in an indistinguishable murmur or imperceptible whisper, even if it would be better that I didn’t understand and what’s said is not intended for my ears or is said precisely so I won’t understand it.

Distance, Imperceptible, Know, People, Whisper, Would Be

Same Author Quotes

Listening is the most dangerous thing of all, listening means knowing, finding out about something and knowing what’s going on, our ears don’t have lids that can instinctively close against the words uttered, they can’t hide from what they sense they’re about to hear, it’s always too late.

Ears, Finding, Hide, Knowing, Listening, Mean

Life is a very bad novelist. It is chaotic and ludicrous.

Bad, Chaotic, Life Is, Novelist, Novelists

The truth never shines forth, as the saying goes, because the only truth is that which is known to no one and which remains untransmitted, that which is not translated into words or images, that which remains concealed and unverified, which is perhaps why we do recount so much or even everything, to make sure that nothing has ever really happened, not once it's been told.

Concealed, Known, Recount, Remains, Shining, Truth Is

People only get married when they've no other option, out of panic or desperation or so as not to lose someone they couldn't bear to lose. It's always the most conventional things that contain the largest measure of madness.

Bear, Bears, Conventional, Measure, Panic, People

We lose everything because everything remains except us. And therefore any form of posterity may be an affront, and perhaps any memory, as well.

Form, May, Memories, Memory, Posterity, Remains