Alejandro Zambra Quotes

To read is to cover one's face. And to write is to show it. ~ Alejandro Zambra

Back then death was invisible for children like me, who went outside, running fearlessly along those fantastical streets, safe from history. The night of the earthquake was the first time I realized that everything could come tumbling down. Now I think it's a good thing to know. It's necessary to remember it every second. ~ Alejandro Zambra

The day you were born was the happiest day of my life, but I was so nervous that I don't know if happiness is really the best word to describe what I felt. I think it is my obligation to tell you, in spite of the absolute love I have always felt for you, in spite of how much you have brightened my life, and I assume your mother's as well - I haven't seen her in around ten years now, but I'm sure that for her as well you have been a constant source of happiness - in spite of all that, I have to tell you that during the eighteen years you've now been alive, I've never stopped wondering what my life would have been like if you had never been born.

It's an overwhelming thought, an exit that leads to the darkest of nights, to the most complete blackness, but also to shadow and sometimes, slowly, toward something like a clearing in the woods. These fantasies are normal, but it's not so common for parents to confess them. For example, over the years I have thought thousands of times that if you hadn't been born I would have needed less money, or could have disappeared for weeks on end without worrying about anyone. I could have prolonged my youth for several more years. I could have even killed myself. I mean, the first consequence of your birth was that from then on, I could never kill myself. ~ Alejandro Zambra

I always thought I didn't have real childhood memories. That my history fit into a few lines. One one page, maybe. In large print. I don't think that anymore. ~ Alejandro Zambra

I remember thinking, without pride of self-pity, that I was not rich or poor, that I wasn't good or bad. But that was difficult: to be neither good nor bad. It seemed to me, in the end, the same as being bad. ~ Alejandro Zambra

She lay on the bed to read a novel; she wanted to forget that bitter conversation and be carried along by the plot, but it was impossible, because the book was about parents who abandoned their children or children who abandoned their parents. Ultimately, that's what all books are about, she thought. ~ Alejandro Zambra

That's what life consists of, I'm afraid: erasing and being erased. ~ Alejandro Zambra

What's the purpose of being with someone if they don't change your life? She said that, and Julio was present when she said it: that life only had purpose if you found someone who changed it, who destroyed your life. ~ Alejandro Zambra

What greater happiness than to know that move exists, that I can watch it many times, that I can watch it always. ~ Alejandro Zambra

Growing up, I meant to be a memory. ~ Alejandro Zambra

It would be better to close the book, close the books, and to face, all at once, not life, which is very big, but the fragile armor of the present. ~ Alejandro Zambra

There are some families in which, at 9:00 at night, the father starts to hit the wine and the mother the ironing, far away from the fate of the children, who play in the yard, pretending to be hurt, or in the rooms in the dark, or in the bathroom making soap bubbles, or in the kitchen making odd deserts out of sour milk...There are also families that remember their dead at this hour, an aura of sorrow dominating their faces. No one plays, no one talks: the adults write letters that no one will read, the children ask questions that no one will answer. ~ Alejandro Zambra

Perhaps he has always limited himself to following images: he hasn't made decisions, hasn't won or lost, he has just let himself be drawn in by certain images, and he followed them, without fear or courage, until he got close to them or shut them out. ~ Alejandro Zambra

Julián didn't want to regain his love, since he had stopped loving her a long time ago. He had stopped loving her one second before he began loving her. It sounds strange, but that's how he feels: instead of loving Karla, he had loved the possibility of love, and then the imminence of love. He had loved the idea of a form moving beneath dirty white sheets. ~ Alejandro Zambra

Parents abandon their children. Children abandon their parents. Parents protect or forsake, but they always forsake. Children stay or go but they always go. And it's all unfair, especially the sound of the words, because language is pleasing and confusing, because ultimately we would like to sing or at least whistle a tune, to walk alongside the stage whistling a tune. We want to be actors waiting patiently for the cue to go onstage. But the audience left a long time ago. ~ Alejandro Zambra

Last night I walked for hours. It was as if I wanted to get lost down some unknown street. To get absolutely and happily lost. But there are moments when we can't, when we don't know how to lose our way. Even if we always go in the wrong direction. Even if we lose all our points of reference. Even if it begins to grow late and we feel the weight of morning as we advance. There are times when no matter how we try to find out what we don't know, we can't lose our way. And perhaps we long for the time when we could be lost. The time when all the streets were new. ~ Alejandro Zambra

My ego every day is more and more polite. I tame it. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

I want to liberate my imagination and my mind with every kind of movie. That is what I wanted to do all my life. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

I have to say, Alejandro Colucci is amazing. I had seen his work several times before I started making the connection between the art and the person making it, and when I heard that he was going to work on the cover for 'Seven Forges,' that connection was not yet cemented. ~ James A. Moore

Good directors don't answer questions with their work. They generate debate and create discussion. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

How long do you think it will take her to figure out who you are?" "She is blind." "Then that makes two of you." Alejandro ~ Lorraine Heath

When I'm tired, I see industrial pictures. But I'll see one every two months. If I see one every day, I'll become an idiot. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

A person is not the same in his life at all times. Your consciousness is developing all the time. When I started making 'El Topo,' I was one person. When I finished that picture, I was another person. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

Can you hear the wind, father?
Remember what mother used to say about the wind?

The wind cannot defeat a tree with strong roots.

You are still breathing..

As long as you can still grab a breath, you fight.
You breathe. Keep breathing.

When there is a storm..
And you stand in front of a tree..
If you look at its branches, you swear it will fall.
But if you watch the trunk, you will see its stability. ~ Alejandro G. Inarritu

You can better embrace life, you can enjoy it more, when you are conscious that it will end. You bite life. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

What is an artistic picture? An artistic picture is very simple. The creator is not the producer. The creator is not the star. The creator is the director, the person who realizes the picture, like a poet, like an artist. The creator of the picture is free to do whatever he wants, how he wants to do it. That is an artistic picture. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

if you want to be understood ...Listen. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Movies have heart. Have mind. Have power. Have ambition. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

I have ADD. I can't pay attention to one thing too long. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

One of the reasons why I agreed to do commercials is that they gave me complete freedom. I just had to have the car in it and write a story around it. I wanted to do something serious set in a Latin American country, but again, it was an exercise in style for me. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

When I went to university, I finally got exposed to European films, and they had a strong impact on me. I felt those films had a lot of things to say that weren't getting expressed in the films I was used to seeing. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Another reptilian brain disguised as a modest mouse in the rat race. ~ Alejandro Saint-Barthélemy

People say I am mad. I am not mad. I am trying to heal my soul. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

I always think politicians and even my dentist have more egos than actors. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

The imagination wants to construct the new worlds, no? Creativity is a solution. If I ask you, "What is your goal in life? How many years do you have to live before to die? How many years do you have? And what you will do with these years you have?" You have pressure there. "How you will realize a good life? How? Tell me!" Then, you start to open your mind. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

I don't think of an actor. I think in the character, and then I search for the actor. Usually I'm thinking without names, because they will change my idea. No big egos. If I want egos - just mine. That is enough. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

In Hollywood you always feel a bit like a hake. The publicists march people up and down in front of you and they interview you ... You feel like the turbot and the sea-bream go by, and you're the hake. ~ Alejandro Amenabar

No more fairy tales. From now on, only fairy facts. ~ John Alejandro King A.k.a. The Covert Comic

To direct actors is difficult. To direct actors in another language is more difficult, but directing non-actors in another language is one of the craziest things that I have done and one of the most rewarding experiences I have had. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

During a party, Luis Buñuel, seduced by Carrington's beauty and emboldened by the notion that she had transcended all bourgeois morality, proposed (with his characteristic bluntness) that she become his mistress. Without even waiting for her answer, he gave her the key to the secret studio that he used as a love nest and told her to meet him at three o'clock the next afternoon. Early the next morning, Leonora went to visit the place alone. She found it tasteless: It looked exactly like a motel room. Taking advantage of the fact that she was in her menstrual period, she covered her hands with blood and used them to make bloody handprints all over the walls in order to provide a bit of decoration for that anonymous, impersonal room. Buñuel never spoke to her again. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

I see only one requirement you have to have to be a director or any kind of artist: rhythm. Rhythm, for me, is everything. Without rhythm, there's no music. Without rhythm, there's no cinema. Without rhythm, there's no architecture. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

If the picture is not an artistic picture, it's show, like television. Television series are very funny, but it's a collective production. An industrial art. A car is not made by a person, it's made by a group of creators, only to go to the market to buy your cigarettes. That is a car - they are not a big art, they are a little art. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

Blessed is he who can call his family friends and his friends family. ~ David Alejandro Fearnhead

When you show people the Truth they will never praise you if they find out their truth is a shackle. ~ Alejandro C. Estrada

I think Twitter is the literature of the 21st century. I think it's an incredible art because when you make a book, you don't know who reads it. But every line, I write a million people, they read it, and then they insult me, they love me, they discuss, they give an opinion instantly, immediately. They are completely in communication, immediately. That is a real art. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

Do not become attached to anything that can destroy you in the course of time. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

To make a film is easy; to make a good film is war. To make a very good film is a miracle. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

A man doesn't cry. In my life, I've never cried. I cannot do it. I am a man. How will I cry? ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

The end of the surrealism movement was so political, so artistically pure. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

Failure doesn't mean anything, it just means changing paths. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

We know so little about Socrates but somehow we still remember he existed; more amazing yet, is how the meaning of ethics has completely escaped us. ~ Alejandro C. Estrada

My wife is 37 years younger than me. I don't feel the difference. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

On a transcendental level, a film is not going to be better or worse because there's a prize behind it. The work will be what it is, with or without a prize. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

I'm an intense person. My own vision of life has always been heavy. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Personality is a piece of paper that folds in to conceal different sides and display others, like an Origami ~ Alejandro Colliard

There was so much fear after 9/11, and that fear caused people to make the wrong decisions. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

What could be the utopia for the present age?
To begin with, I would want all of human order to make a partnership, beginning in schools. It is atrocious that the children leave the partnership and go to be educated by a professor, just a man or a woman. This negates partnership. Classes should be taught by couples of both sexes, and children should be educated by a man and a woman ...
... not necessarily a husband and wife. This is what I would do as a first political measure to improve social life: all human activities would have to be carried out in complimentary pairs. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

Many Mexican directors are scared to shoot in Mexico City, which is why there are many stories in Mexican cinema about little rural towns, or set a hundred years ago. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

The way films establish the order of scenes is very artificial. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Although often with good intentions, our parents and teachers attribute negative definitions to us, which last for many years and prevent us from developing ourselves with pleasure. In psychomagic, we call these definitions "labels" because they stick to the self. So that the consultant can free herself from them, I advise:
▶ The consultant writes on adhesive labels as many definitions as they gave her, for example: "You have no ear for music," "You don't know how to use your hands," "You're a freeloader, liar, thief," "You're egotistical, weak, dumb, fat, skinny, vain, ungrateful," and so on. The consultant glues these labels to every part of the body - many of them to the face - and goes out in public that way for as many hours as possible. When the consultant returns home, she should remove the labels, roll them into a ball, take the ball to the city dump, and throw it on top of the garbage pile, having beforehand caressed her body with hands soaked in pleasant perfume. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

Alejandro opened his mouth "Marry Me!"
"If she says Yes shoot him." Bern said to Leon, his face completely serious. "She'll thank us later."
Bugg stirred in his seat. "Catalina! Do not marry this dickfucker! There are better birds in the sea!" He turned to my mom and said "Pardon my French. ~ Ilona Andrews

Cooked foods delay the detox signal further, because heating any food above 180° Fahrenheit destroys the enzymes contained in it. Enzymes are of paramount importance for digestion. Manufacturing them takes so much energy that nature provides them already made. Raw vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds contain the enzymes necessary for their own digestion. When those foods get cooked, we lose that important resource. We have to manufacture all our own enzymes from scratch, which adds to the energy cost of eating and delays the funding for detoxification. (p. 131) ~ Alejandro Junger

Life is beautiful, what do you think? In the morning I say, 'Ah, I am alive still!' All my friends die already. I am alive. It is fantastic. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

Carlsen came with a line that was not very theoretical, trying to challenge the World Champion to play chess. [ ... ] But Anand proved that even this obscure line is something he has studied before, and it was Carlsen that was set back. ~ Alejandro Ramirez

All of us want something in life, all of us have flaws, and all of us have strengths. So, I always try to discover those things in a character and then try to expose it in one way or another. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu