Javier Quotes

Artistic prejudices are always the most difficult to root out. Critics - whose duty should be to see beyond the pretensions of artists and the public's passing fancies - often allow themselves to be persuaded by the way authors present their work, by what they say they have achieved, or else are guided by whatever has been a wild success - usually in order to take the opposing view - and which had been damningly labelled 'popular. ~ Javier Marias

Fiction always surpasses reality but reality is always richer than fiction. ~ Javier Cercas

You ain't too smart, are ya boy? I'm Javier "Bones" Jones. I'm the baddest man there is in this town or any town through The Mississippi. You thinking you're gonna waltz up on me and kill me? Ha! I'll do for you like I did for my late dog and put you out of your misery. ~ Justin Bienvenue

Awards were made in Hollywood, in whatever the time it was created. They're to promote each other's movies. You give me an award, I give you an award and people will believe that we are great movies and they'll go to see them. It's still the same. ~ Javier Bardem

I used to be a good party boy. I'm old. I'm an old man. You pay the consequences. I'm just fine with a couple of drinks, no more than that. ~ Javier Bardem

I've always belonged to the street, and I always will. It's in my DNA. ~ Javier Bardem

When you put gas in your car you are making a political statement, because you are supporting the empires that control and continue the destruction of some countries. ~ Javier Bardem

Perhaps it was his wife who mainly made him laugh, for there are people who can make us laugh even when they don't intend to, largely because their very presence pleases us, and so it's easy enough to set us off, simply seeing them and being in their company and hearing them is all it takes, even if they're not saying anything very extraordinary or are even deliberately spouting nonsense, which we nevertheless find funny. ~ Javier Marias

The books we don't read are full of warnings; we will either never read them or they will arrive too late. ~ Javier Marias

When I saw 'Talk to Her' for the first time, I was crying out loud because I couldn't imagine that I was doing that film. ~ Javier Camara

Why do you think politicians send soldiers to the wars they declare, if, of course, they still go to the bother of declaring them ... mediation, keeping a distance from the actual events and being privileged enough not to have to witness them. ~ Javier Marias

When you don't know what to believe, when you're not prepared to play the amateur detective, then you get tired and dismiss the entire business, you let it go, you stop thinking and wash your hands of the truth or of the whole tangled mess - which comes to the same thing. The truth is never clear, it's always a tangled mess. Even when you get to the bottom of it. But in real life almost no one needs to find the truth or devote himself to investigating anything, that only happens in puerile novels. ~ Javier Marias

I knew that Sundays in England aren't just ordinary dull Sundays, the same the world over, which demand that one simply tiptoe through without disturbing them or paying them the least attention, they are vaster and slower and more burdensome than anywhere else I know. ~ Javier Marias

The soldier doesn't usually act on his own initiative, he doesn't harbour feelings of hatred or resentment or jealousy, he isn't motivated by long-held desires or personal ambition; the only motivating force is a vague, rhetorical, empty patriotism, for those soldiers, that is, who are moved by such feelings or allow themselves to be convinced. ~ Javier Marias

I'm getting so old - it's more uncomfortable to do those scenes now than when I was 20. I mean, I don't have a big problem with nudity on screen. But usually the days when you do those naked love scenes are the weirdest ones on set. Everyone is uncomfortable. You're like, 'Hi. How are you?' Then the next minute you're with an actress who you don't know and you're pretending to make love to her in front of all the crew. The acting challenge is pretending things are OK. ~ Javier Bardem

Javier Pastore wouldn't get a beach ball off me if we were locked in a phone box. He's turd. Anyone who thinks he isn't is clueless. ~ Joey Barton

It's not easy, being the best at what he does but still having the humility and desire to be close to those around him. In private, Messi is a great leader, a great captain. Usually the best in any area see things differently but in this case Leo is still an ordinary person and that makes our relationship work. He's the leader of ARG, he has helped us to reach two finals in one year. I have great respect for Messi the person and player. ~ Javier Mascherano

I am a free man. I feel as light as a feather. ~ Javier Perez De Cuellar

I truly thank whoever's up there for giving me the opportunity to be loved. ~ Javier Bardem

The victory of Mr. Kostunica will be a reality. ~ Javier Solana

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. ~ Javier Marias

But I remember the moment when my father died. I wasn't a very committed Catholic beforehand, but when that happened it suddenly all felt so obvious: I now believe religion is our attempt to find an explanation, for us to feel more protected. ~ Javier Bardem

Of course, if you ask, nobody was there when they torched the churches. ~ Javier Cercas

I think it was probably both the coincidence and the beer that made Miralles say at some point that we were going to end up the same, defeated and alone and
punch-drunk in a dead-end city, pissing blood before going into the ring to fight to the death against our own shadows in an empty stadium. ~ Javier Cercas

Some would say karma, but Javier never much believed in that. What he did believe in was that sooner or later, everyone will be at the same level, everything will even out. It was just luck if you were alive to see it happen. ~ Karina Halle

Everybody in Spain is sick of me. But in America, there's curiosity about the new kid on the block who doesn't speak English very well. The attention makes me feel vulnerable, which is something I hadn't felt in a while. But I like it. ~ Javier Bardem

A drone is often preferred for missions that are too "dull, dirty, or dangerous" for manned aircraft."

PROLOGUE

The graffiti was in Spanish, neon colors highlighting the varicose cracks in the wall. It smelled of urine and pot. The front door was metal with four bolt locks and the windows were frosted glass, embedded with chicken wire. They swung out and up like big fake eye-lashes held up with a notched adjustment bar.

This was a factory building on the near west side of Cleveland in an industrial area on the Cuyahoga River known in Ohio as The Flats.

First a sweatshop garment factory, then a warehouse for imported cheeses then a crack den for teenage potheads. It was now headquarters for Magic Slim, the only pimp in Cleveland with his own film studio and training facility.

Her name was Cosita, she was eighteen looking like fourteen. One of nine children from El Chorillo. a dangerous poverty stricken barrio on the outskirts of Panama City. Her brother, Javier, had been snatched from the streets six months ago, he was thirteen and beautiful.

Cosita had a high school education but earned here degree on the streets of Panama.

Interpol, the world's largest international police organization, had recruited Cosita at seventeen. She was smart, street savvy, motivated and very pretty. Just what Interpol was looking for.

Cosita would become a Drone! ~ Nick Hahn

Trade is not a zero sum game where one country's gain is another country's loss. It is a positive sum game where all countries and thus the world benefit. ~ Javier A. Reyes

Sometimes, rehearsals are not worth it if you do not have an accurate cast, and that is one of the most difficult parts about a film. ~ Javier Camara

Elesa slept with Mark and Mark slept with Tina. Tina slept with Javier, the first time he seen her. Javier slept with Loopy, and Loopy slept with Rob. Rob slept with Lisa who slept with Steve ... ~ Coolio

The middle and working classes are paying the debt that the financial markets created. ~ Javier Bardem

We are a big family; we are all very close, and we always want to talk about what is going on with each other. ~ Javier Hernandez

She barely moved and was, of course, concerned only with her own beautification and cleanliness. She dozed or was, at any rate, lying down, eyes closed, on her front, on her back, on one side, on the other, covered in sunscreen, her gleaming arms and legs always fully extended so that no part of her would remain untanned, no fold in her skin, even her armpits, even her groin (nor, it goes without saying, her buttocks), ~ Javier Marias

Memory is threatening to replace history in an era saturated with memory. This is bad news. Memory and history are notionally opposites: memory is individual, partial and subjective; history is collective and aspires to be comprehensive and objective. Memory and history are also complementary: history gives sense to memory; memory is a tool, an ingredient, a part of history. But memory is not history. ~ Javier Cercas

Threatening the playable character with physical injury will make platform puzzles easier. ~ Kirejan Javier

After giving it some thought, I've decided to name my monkey mind Ricky Bobby. I was thinking about Latin names like Javier, but I don't want to make my jumping, distractable self sound mysterious and sexy. Ricky Bobby makes me laugh. A name like that seems silly, not strong. Just a goofy little thing that doesn't know what to do with its hands, likes to go fast, and loves tiny, infant, baby Jesus. ~ Anna White

I wanted to become a painter for a while. I think it was because I was lazy. ~ Javier Bardem

Life is a very bad novelist. It is chaotic and ludicrous. ~ Javier Marias

For me, it's a real shock to see American mainstream films. I can't see these films because it's always the same thing to me. This is very American. Violence is very American, and I can't understand these films. Why do they use violence? To show what? Masculinity? To show fear? Defense? What are you showing with all this violence? ~ Javier Camara

There is no middle ground in Hollywood; you're a failure or you're a success. That mentality is wild. ~ Javier Bardem

Cromer-Blake has always introduced Dayanand, the Indian doctor, as a great friend which, of course, equips him
indeed is the ideal qualification
to become the most bitter of enemies. ~ Javier Marias

I was disappointed not to be able to sign [for Barcelona] last season. When the best club in the world calls you, then it is something that you want to happen. I have signed for the only club who really wanted me. In no moment did I ever think that Inter was a possibility. Rafa valued me and perhaps that is why people started saying that I could go there but this is the only club that pushed to sign me, ~ Javier Mascherano

Sometimes I say to myself, what are you doing in this absurd job? Why don't you go to Africa and help people? But I cannot help people, because I am a hypochondriac. ~ Javier Bardem

I have a man and a woman in the same body; I have the male and female values in the same body. ~ Javier Bardem

When I was born, there was a very isolated idea of what it meant to be a man or a woman, and you belonged to one gender or the other. ~ Javier Bardem

We all have to lead our own life, and we only have the one life, and the only people who can live life not according to their own desires are those who have no desires
which is the majority, actually. People can say what they like, they can speak of abnegation, sacrifice, generosity, acceptance, and resignation, but it's all false. The norm is for people to think that they desire whatever comes to them, whatever they achieve along the way or whatever is given to them
they have no preconceived desires. ~ Javier Marias

For some dark reason you heretics come in droves to this House of God. Its light attracts you, but you are incapable of recognizing that. ~ Javier Sierra

I don't believe in God, I only believe in Al Pacino, and that's the truth. ~ Javier Bardem

Narrative horror, disgust. That's what drives him mad, I'm sure of it, what obsesses him. I've known other people with the same aversion, or awareness, and they weren't even famous, fame is not a deciding factor, there are many individuals who experience their life as if it were the material of some detailed report, and they inhabit that life pending its hypothetical or future plot. They don't give it much thought, it's just a way of experiencing things, companionable, in a way, as if there were always spectators or permanent witnesses, even of their most trivial goings-on and in the dullest of times. Perhaps it's a substitute for the old idea of the omnipresence of God, who saw every second of each of our lives, it was very flattering in a way, very comforting despite the implicit threat and punishment, and three or four generations aren't enough for Man to accept that his gruelling existence goes on without anyone ever observing or watching it, without anyone judging it or disapproving of it. And in truth there is always someone: a listener, a reader, a spectator, a witness, who can also double up as simultaneous narrator and actor: the individuals tell their stories to themselves, to each his own, they are the ones who peer in and look at and notice things on a daily basis, from the outside in a way; or, rather, from a false outside, from a generalised narcissism, sometimes known as "consciousness". That's why so few people can withstand mockery, humiliation, ridicule, the ~ Javier Marias

Bert gave a long low whistle, like a bullet that could bend around corners. ~ Javier Pedro Zabala

Today, I'm going to the grocery store. ~ Javier O. Huerta

When you love to kill and can do it as well as I can, then what better way to raise hell?" -Javier "Bones" Jones ~ Justin Bienvenue

Stubbed it out in the ashtray she had been using before, for her equally ~ Javier Marias

If there's one thing I hate the Communists for, Your Excellency,' Foxa once said to Franco, 'it's for obliging me to join the Falange. ~ Javier Cercas

The worse thing that can happen to anyone, worse than death itself, and the worst thing one can make others do, is to return from the place from which no one returns, to come back to life at the wrong time, when you are no longer expected, when it's too late and inappropriate, when the living have assumed you are over and done with and have continued or taken up their lives again, leaving no room for you at all. ~ Javier Marias

We all know what we mean by fighting terrorism. In reality, there is total cooperation between the countries north and south of the Mediterranean against terrorism. ~ Javier Solana

We live in a world of denial, and we don't know what the truth is anymore. ~ Javier Bardem

We cannot know what time will do to us with its fine, indistinguishable layers upon layers, we cannot know what it might make of us. It advances stealthily, day by day and hour by hour and step by poisoned step, never drawing attention to its surreptitious labours, so respectful and considerate that it never once gives us a sudden prod or a nasty fright. Every morning, it turns up with its soothing, invariable face and tells us exactly the opposite of what is actually happening: that everything is fine and nothing has changed, that everything is just as it was yesterday
the balance of power
that nothing has been gained and nothing lost, that our face is the same, as is our hair and our shape, that the person who hated us continues to hate us and the person who loved us continues to love us. ~ Javier Marias

Celebrity is very weird. ~ Javier Bardem

Letty had barely touched her food. Javier stared down at her through a pair of aviator sunglasses. "You forgot something," she said. "What's that?" "My name. Who will they be expecting?" "Selena Kitt. S-E-L-E-N-A K-I-T-T. But you won't be carrying any identification. ~ Blake Crouch

When you stand, you can see everyone's weak spots. ~ Kirejan Javier

Who is good and who is bad? Life isn't black and white, Javier. You and I, we're just trying to live in all the grey. Isn't that what you've done? Isn't that what you want? To live? ~ Karina Halle

I have this problem with violence. I've only done one movie in almost 20 years where I killed people. It's called Perdita Durango. It's a Spanish movie. I'm very proud of the movie, but I felt weird doing that. ~ Javier Bardem

You want to do your job well so that people in the future say, 'OK, he's not bad, let's hire him.' ~ Javier Bardem

I hope very much this event, the death of Milosevic will help Serbia to look definitely to the future. ~ Javier Solana

I look at myself, and I see a Spanish person who's trying to be understood by an English-speaking audience and is putting a lot of energy into that, instead of into expressing himself freely and feeling comfortable. ~ Javier Bardem

At times, my confidence is rock bottom, although I try for it to be sky high, thanks to the people that are always there with me and support me. ~ Javier Hernandez

Leaning forward adds 30% concentration. ~ Kirejan Javier

With kids, what you see is what you get. There's just truth in their innocence that we as adults have lost and will never regain. ~ Michelle Figley

Illusions are important. What you foresee or what you remember can be as important as what really happens. ~ Javier Marias

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. ~ Javier Marias

Personal accounts flow from the heart and tend to be the most difficult to write. It's nearly impossible to remove the emotional undertones, and it takes so much courage to open those pages to everyone else. ~ Javier A. Robayo

I do respect people's faith, but I don't respect their manipulation of that faith in order to create fear and control. ~ Javier Bardem

SWAT is already on its way. I'll be at your position in about ten minutes. SWAT should arrive in about fifteen to twenty."
[Javier:] "I'll have her by then. ~ Pamela Clare

We do tend to believe things while we're hearing or reading them. Afterwards, it's another matter, when the book is closed and the voice stops speaking. ~ Javier Marias

If he surrendered the advantage of the gun he would find himself floating in the gutters of an inhuman world, a part of the daily flotsam and jetsam of a hundred thousand abortions whooshing down the wormhole drain, drowning in a sea of pus-streaked semen and warm piss and menstrual juice and dead fetuses and radiator fluid and bloody diarrhea, seeking refuge inside the cathedral ruins of an embryonic sac, curling up to say his prayers then whispering goodnight, God speed, good riddance, gadzooks, the sac shrinking, disappearing into the frigid, humpbacked void of sodomized angels, wingless now, lecherous gargoyles sporting skeletal appendages without feathers, it would be a birth in reverse, the collapse of the universal soul. He wasn't sure how to save himself. ~ Javier Pedro Zabala

IN ALL UNEQUAL relationships, those lacking a name or explicit recognition, there is usually one person who takes the initiative, who phones to suggest meeting up, while the other person has just two possibilities or ways of reaching the same goal of not fading away or vanishing, even though he or she believes that, whatever happens, this is sure to be his or her final fate. One way is simply to wait and do nothing, trusting that eventually the other person will miss you, that your silence and absence will become unexpectedly unbearable or even worrying, because we all very quickly grow accustomed to what is given to us or what is there. ~ Javier Marias

Javier to Hunter: How long you and Dargangelo been married? ~ Pamela Clare

What I miss most about Mexico isn't the food or the customs; it's my family and the way we'd all sit around chatting together. ~ Javier Hernandez

Imagine the situation between Israel and Palestine. It's such a big mess. You can be on one side or the other. But what's clear is that there's an urgent need for a solution there and that's been dragging on for so long. ~ Javier Bardem

¿Is it true that we are approaching the Eistein society?
Now we can go and learn fast, just travelling at the speed of internet. ~ Javier Arana

I can't imagine what it would be like being James Bond 24 hours. That must be exhausting. ~ Javier Bardem

Bond is the longest-running franchise ever and there's a reason for that: they are action movies but they are also touched by current events without being political or too serious. ~ Javier Bardem

Not to gain time, but maybe to lose it, to see it pass. ~ Javier Marias

The aim of political institutions like the United Nations is to draw the line between struggle and conflict and to make it possible for nations to stay on the right side of that line ... ~ Javier Perez De Cuellar

A part of being an actor is I people watch. I like to observe their behaviour, watch their reactions on the street and see how they talk to each other, and that's impossible when they are looking back at you. I used to enjoy taking the train and watching people in their own minds, struggling with themselves. ~ Javier Bardem

What happened is the least of it. It's a novel, and once you've finished a novel, what happened in it is of little importance and soon forgotten. What matters are the possibilities and ideas that the novel's imaginary plot communicates to us and infuses us with, a plot that we recall far more vividly than real events and to which we pay far more attention. ~ Javier Marias

People have been born in refugee camps and they are getting tired of that. ~ Javier Bardem

We don't care about humiliating ourselves to ourselves, after all, no one is going to judge us and there are no witnesses. ~ Javier Marias

I was emotionally and physically punched in the stomach. This is not a place where you go and deliver the lines and then you come back. It's kind of a life-changing experience. But it can't get better than this for any actor - this is like an opera. ~ Javier Bardem

And we offer each other words of consolation or distraction or encouragement when we see that one or the other of us is in need of such words. We also miss each other (vaguely) when we're not together, she's one of those people (in everyone's life there are four or five such people whose loss one truly feels) to whom you're used to telling everything that happens to you, that is, one of those people you think about when something happens to you, be it funny or dramatic, and for whom you store up events and anecdotes. You accept misfortunes gladly because you know you can tell those five people about them afterwards. ~ Javier Marias

Here in America, every single actor, since they were little boys, they sing and dance and perform like angels. We don't do that. We are actors who work in a theater in very classic performances or plays. ~ Javier Camara

The last time I saw Miguel Desvern or Deverne was also the last time that his wife, Luisa, saw him, which seemed strange, perhaps unfair, given that she was his wife, while I, on the other hand, was a person he had never met, a woman with whom he had never exchanged so much as a single word. ~ Javier Marias

Auschwitz was attacked and recovered by the Russian forces on January 27th, 1945. A very short time before that date Buchenwald had been reconquered. Buchenwald was the first concentration camp to be opened and exposed to the public eye. ~ Javier Gomez Perez

He'll be a minister in Spain some day, or, at the very least, ambassador to Washington, he's exactly the kind of pretentious fool with just a thin veneer of cordiality that the Right produces by the dozen and which the Left reproduces and imitates whenever they're in power, as if they were the victims of some form of contagion. ~ Javier Marias

We don't object to our date of birth, so why object to our date of death, which is just as much a matter of chance. ~ Javier Marias

Everything can be ridiculous or tragic according to who is doing the telling or how they tell it. ~ Javier Marias

Fiction has the ability to show us what we don't know and what doesn't happen. ~ Javier Marias

Many people out there don't have a choice in choosing their friends and the people they're being manipulated by. Thank God, I have that choice. I can use my judgment and choose. ~ Javier Bardem

Peace - the word evokes the simplest and most cherished dream of humanity. Peace is, and has always been, the ultimate human aspiration. And yet our history overwhelmingly shows that while we speak incessantly of peace, our actions tell a very different story. ~ Javier Perez De Cuellar