Juan Carlos I Of Spain Quotes

I can remember when I was a bit of an ETA fan myself. It was in 1973, when a group of Basque militants assassinated Adm. Carrero Blanco. The admiral was a stone-faced secret police chief, personally groomed to be the successor to the decrepit Francisco Franco. His car blew up, killing only him and his chauffeur with a carefully planted charge, and not only was the world well rid of another fascist, but, more important, the whole scheme of extending Franco's rule was vaporized in the same instant. The dictator had to turn instead to Crown Prince Juan Carlos, who turned out to be the best Bourbon in history and who swiftly dismantled Franco's entire system. If this action was 'terrorism,' it had something to be said for it. Everyone I knew in Spain made a little holiday in their hearts when the gruesome admiral went sky-high. ~ Christopher Hitchens

"Only if one loves this earth with unbending passion can one relieve one's sadness," don Juan said. "Warriors are always joyful because their love is unalterable and their beloved, the earth, embraces them and bestows upon them inconceivable gifts. The sadness belongs only to those who hate the very thing that gives shelter to their beings." Don Juan again caressed the ground with tenderness. "This lovely being, which is alive to its last recesses and understands every feeling, soothed me, it cured me of my pains, and finally when I had fully understood my love for it, it taught me freedom." ~ Carlos Castaneda

For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I want to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it. ~ Carlos Castaneda

Red seeped into Nick's face. "Elizabeth and I were married two weeks ago, " he explained to Samantha.
Laughter crinkled the skin around Wyatt's eyes. "Nick built her a house before the wedding. I never saw one go up so fast in my life."
Nick's flush deepened. "It's not completely finished yet. Elizabeth just refused to wait any longer."
There was a touch of wonder in his tone.
Emotion welled into Samantha's throat and she swallowed. She remembered how Juan Carlos had acted those first weeks they were married. Proud, happy as not quite believing his good fortune. What a special time that had been. How she missed him.
"I wish you happiness in your marriage, Mr. Sanders," she said.
"Call me, Nick, Ma'am." The red receded from his cheeks, leaving behind a glow. "Thank you, I'll pass your good wishes to Elizabeth. ~ Debra Holland

Can we perceive those inorganic beings, don Juan?" I asked. "We certainly can," he replied. "Sorcerers do it at will. Average people do it, but they don't realize that they're doing it because they are not conscious of the existence of a twin world. When they think of a twin world, they enter into all kinds of mental masturbation, but it has never occurred to them that their fantasies have their origin in a subliminal knowledge that all of us have: that we are not alone. ~ Carlos Castaneda

For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long, long paths, but I am not anywhere ... Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead no where; but one has a heart, the other does'nt. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. On makes you strong; the other weakens you ... path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length. And there I travel,lookng looking, breathlessly. ~ Carlos Castenada

Nestor said to me. "A
row of Hussars on horseback will come to take me. What will it be for you?"
I remembered don Juan telling me once that death might be behind anything imaginable, even
behind a dot on my writing pad. He gave me then the definitive metaphor of my death.
I had told him that once while walking on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles I had heard
the sound of a trumpet playing an old, idiotic popular tune. The music was coming from a
record shop across the street.
Never had I heard a more beautiful sound. I became enraptured by it. I had to sit down on the
curb. The limpid brass sound of that trumpet was going directly to my brain. I felt it just
above my right temple. It soothed me until I was drunk with it.
When it concluded, I knew that there would be no way of ever repeating that experience, and I
had enough detachment not to rush into the store and buy the record and a stereo set to play it
on.
Don Juan said that it had been a sign given to me by the powers that rule the destiny of men.
When the time comes for me to leave the world, in whatever form, I will hear the same sound
of that trumpet, the same idiotic tune, the same peerless trumpeter. ~ Carlos Castaneda

The women cannot go out except to go to church or to the bullfight, and even that is unusual. I consider it a very ugly custom, and if I couldn't go out as I wished, I would leave this country [Spain], if only because of that one custom of the inhabitants. ~ Anais Nin

I would say poetry is language charged with emotion. It's words, rhythmically organized ... A poem is a complete little universe. It exists separately. Any poem that has any worth expresses the whole life of the poet. It gives a view of what the poet is. ~ William Carlos Williams

What happens when I break one of your fuckin' rules? ~ Simone Elkeles

And it's just the same with the inner life of man. Anyone can know about it nowadays. How the devil am I to prove to my counsel that I don't know my murderous impulses through C. G. Jung, jealousy through Marcel Proust, Spain through Hemingway, Paris through Ernst Jünger, Switzerland through Mark Twain, Mexico through Graham Greene, my fear of death through Bernanos, inability ever to reach my destination through Kafka, and all sorts of other things through Thomas Mann? It's true, you need never have read these authorities, you can absorb them through your friends, who also live all their experiences second-hand. ~ Max Frisch

Writing is essentially re-writing and re-writing everything to death, so I spend a lot of hours there in the studio trying to make the language work to paint each picture in the reader's mind and generally deploring how lousy my efforts turn out to be. Like most writers, I suppose. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

On the last day of January 1915, under the sign of the Water Bearer, in a year of a great war, and down in the shadow of some French mountains on the borders of Spain, I came into the world. Free by nature, in the image of God, I was nevertheless the prisoner of my own violence and my own selfishness, in the image of the world into which I was born. That world was the picture of Hell, full of men like myself, loving God and yet hating Him; born to love Him, living instead in fear and hopeless self-contradictory hungers. ~ Thomas Merton

I am a big fan of the Gallagher brothers. At Liverpool, they came a few times; they are friends of Steven Gerrard. It was nice to meet them. When I was in Spain, I couldn't speak English, so I couldn't understand the lyrics. When I came to England, I started studying music and trying to understand what my favourite songs said. ~ Fernando Torres

I turned to discover the faint smile of the bookseller's
niece. Her voice was pure crystal, transparent and so fragile I feared that her words would break if I interrupted them. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

When I went to Spain, the tourism minister told me a lot of people want to come to India, as they love Bollywood, but they don't have direct flights and find it difficult to get visas on arrival that is currently offered to only citizens of nine countries. ~ Chiranjeevi

There was no response. Soon afterward, a skiff flying the Spanish flag approached the Charleston. Two Spanish officers came aboard and apologized for not having returned the American "salute" because they had no gunpowder left in their arsenal. It turned out that they had not been resupplied for months and did not know the United States and Spain were at war. The next morning an American lieutenant went ashore. At 10:15 he handed the Spanish commandant a message demanding surrender of the island within thirty minutes. The commandant retired to his quarters. Twenty-nine minutes later he emerged with a reply. "Being without defenses of any kind and without any means for meeting the present situation," he had written, "I am under the sad necessity of being unable to resist such superior forces and regretfully accede to your demands. ~ Stephen Kinzer

Other times I just lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling, imagining the kind of life I want to have when I get older. I picture myself at the top of the Eiffel Tower, climbing pyramids in Egypt, dancing in the streets in Spain, riding in a boat in Venice, and walking on the Great Wall of China. In these dreams, I'm a famous writer who wears flamboyant scarves and travels all around the world, meeting fascinating people. No one tells me what to do. I go wherever I want and do whatever I please. ~ Erika L. Sánchez

She wore an ivory-white dress and held the world in her eyes. I barely remember the
priest's words or the faces of the guests, full of hope, who filled the church on that March
morning. All that remains in my memory is the touch of her lips and, when I half opened
my eyes, the secret oath I carried with me and would remember all the days of my life. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

When I go onstage, I don't know what I'm going to say. I don't know what's going to come out of my mouth. It's one of those questions where any and everything is possible. I literally could be talking about somebody I was hanging out with two seconds ago or something from the news. Literally, there's really no rhyme or reason for it. I want to be free flowing like that. ~ Carlos Mencia

I was no longer able to hear the music that issues from a decent piece of prose. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Prince Felipe is the best ambassador for Spain: I have already told Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo, minister of foreign affairs, that the prince should travel to the U.S. more often. ~ James Costos

Perhaps if by chance I was seen arranging the shop window in my underpants, some lady in need of strong literary emotions would be drawn in and inspired to part with a bit of hard cash. According to expert opinion, the future of literature depends on women and as God is my witness the female is yet to be born who can resist the allure of this stupendous physique. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

When we get to the door I reach for the doorbell but Carlos steps in front of me, grins and then starts banging on the front door with all of his might. The door shakes and his pounding thunders throughout the house. (...) We must be the world's loudest burglars.
I shout, "Why are you pounding so hard?"
His grin gets even larger. "If anyone's home, they'll definitely answer that knock. If nobody's home what difference does it make? ~ Greg Logsted

Once I'd worked out that I couldn't possibly expect people to enjoy a monstrous, 3000-page book, I realised I could in fact create a labyrinth of a story with four different points of entry. But what interested me was creating something that would rearrange itself every time you read one of the other books. So depending on which order you read them, the implications and angles would change. To get that right, each one of the books had to have its own personality and texture
even though they are connected, they are very different creatures. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I left the apartment without even bothering to close the door behind me. Once outside, I faced a world of buildings and faces that seemed strange and distant. I started to walk aimlessly, oblivious to the cold and the rain-filled wind that was starting to lash the town with the breath of a curse. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The other evening, in that cafe-cabaret in the Rue de la Fontaine, where I had run aground with Tramsel and Jocard, who had taken me there to see that supposedly-fashionable singer... how could they fail to see that she was nothing but a corpse?

Yes, beneath the sumptuous and heavy ballgown, which swaddled her and held her upright like a sentry-box of pink velvet trimmed and embroidered with gold - a coffin befitting the queen of Spain - there was a corpse! But the others, amused by her wan voice and her emaciated frame, found her quaint - more than that, quite 'droll'...

Droll! that drab, soft and inconsistent epithet that everyone uses nowadays! The woman had, to be sure, a tiny carven head, and a kind of macabre prettiness within the furry heap of her opera-cloak. They studied her minutely, interested by the romance of her story: a petite bourgeoise thrown into the high life following the fad which had caught her up - and neither of them, nor anyone else besides in the whole of that room, had perceived what was immediately evident to my eyes. Placed flat on the white satin of her dress, the two hands of that singer were the two hands of a skeleton: two sets of knuckle-bones gloved in white suede. They might have been drawn by Albrecht
Durer: the ten fingers of an evil dead woman, fitted at the ends of the two overlong and excessively thin arms of a mannequin...

And while that room convulsed with laughter and thrilled with pleasure, g ~ Jean Lorrain

And I say that Your Highnesses ought not to consent that any foreigner does business or sets foot here, except Christian Catholics since this was the end and the beginning of the enterprise, that it should be for the enhancement and glory of the Christian religion, nor should anyone who is not a good Christian come to these parts. Here may be found the first suggestion of the exclusive colonial policy that Spain and other nations followed. ~ Christopher Columbus

My parents and grandparents did not tolerate idle thoughts or behavior. If the action did not have a purpose or lead you in a positive direction, their feeling was "why bother?" This is how I was built. This is why I refuse to fail. ~ Carlos Wallace

In all honesty, we don't know what's in the hearts of other men. All I know is that I respect comedy and I know comedy. I would never, ever, ever take somebody else's joke. ~ Carlos Mencia

I would have issues with directions songs were taking, but I never heard one of Carlos' [Dangler] basslines and said, "I don't like that, do something else." The same goes for the beat and the guitars. I think that's why we were able to make four albums together. ~ Paul Banks

I think today will be the day. Today our luck will change,' I proclaimed on the wings of the first coffee of the day, pure optimism in a liquid state. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon