The 70 best phrases of Eduardo Mendoza
edward mendoza (Barcelona, 1943) is a famous Spanish writer. His novels, with a simple style and aimed at all audiences, have been great sellers.
Of course, the quality of his stories is always an essential requirement, and both critical and public Eduardo Mendoza is considered one of the quintessential writers of the late 20th century and early of the XXI.
- Related article: "The 70 best phrases of Miguel de Cervantes"
Famous phrases of Eduardo Mendoza
With works such as The truth about the Savolta case, No news from gurb either the year of the deluge, Eduardo Mendoza's work also covers essays and theater.
With today's article we want to pay a small tribute to this author with the best phrases of Eduardo Mendoza.
1. They were days of irresponsible plenitude, of imperceptible happiness...
Poetic fragment of The truth about the Savolta case.
2. It is human nature to falter when dreams begin to materialize.
A reflection that we must take into consideration.
3. That all those locked up there clearly perceive the madness of others but none of their own...
Fragment of The Adventure of the Ladies' Room.
4. The smallness of the premises saved him cleaning and furniture costs.
Fragment of The truth about the Savolta case.
5. Ancestors and descendants are important. Past and future. Without past and future, everything is present, and present is fleeting.
Over time and its limits.
6. You don't know who Franco was, with him there were no freedoms or social justice, but it was a pleasure to watch television.
A great reflection on the time of dictatorship in Spain.
7. Do like me: take advantage of being old. I am not old. Go practicing. The secret to getting very old is to get old very soon.
To keep in mind for the future.
8. He symbolized better than anyone the spirit of an era that today has died a bit with him.
Fragment of the city of prodigies.
9. And that all this he achieved alone and without help, starting from scratch based on courage and will?
The Cervantes Institute, on the figure of Eduardo Mendoza.
10. You may wonder how I have been able to be so successful with men without being worth much. Does not have merit. Men are very demanding when it comes to making aesthetic judgments about women, but when push comes to shove, they will settle for anything. When I discovered this, my life became much more interesting. I don't mind admitting that I have used men.
Another paragraph from The Adventure of the Ladies' Room.
11. Luckily a tip solves any problem in a satisfactory way. In this country everything is fixed with a good tip. When I arrived, it was hard for me to understand it, but now it seems to me to be a magnificent system: it allows salaries to be kept low and at the same time stages the hierarchy. The worker charges half and the other half has to thank the master, redoubling his servility.
About the city of Madrid.
12. Paquita must have been slightly past the age at which a daughter from a good family, especially if she is pretty, intelligent, and outgoing, is married, or at least engaged. Otherwise, as was clearly the present case, the interested party used to affect prudishness or exaggerate a poise and independence that would leave no doubt about the voluntariness of his singleness.
Another fragment of Cat fight.
13. The truth is, in case any reader joins the account of these adventures without prior knowledge of my background, that in the past I was unjustly imprisoned, although this now it is irrelevant, in a penitentiary center for delinquents with mental disorders and that said center was run for life and with less than gentle methods by the doctor sugrañas.
The struggle of the bag and the life.
14. The only thing I can assure you is that on no occasion, not even in the most critical situations, have I seen, as is often said, my whole life as if it were a movie, which is always a relief, because dying watching movies is bad enough in itself Spanish.
From the same work as the previous fragment.
15. He devoted his entire lecture to a single painting: The death of Actaeon. It was not one of the works exhibited in the Louvre, or in any other museum. Apparently it belonged and surely still belongs to a lucky individual. (...) the professor was showing the different details of that curious mythological episode.
From the same work as the previous one, on a painting with unique details.
16. For a few years, and after some somewhat bumpy beginnings, of which he left a written record at the time, he ran a ladies' hairdressing salon at that, for some time now, only one Caixa employee came with admirable regularity to claim the arrears of his successive credits.
The mystery of the haunted crypt.
17. Men are more obtuse: money and soccer have blocked their hypothalamus and their vital fluids do not circulate. On the other hand, women, as soon as they disconnect the mobile, release the powers of the mind and the one that you neglect has already reached extrasensory perception.
A portrait of today's world.
18. Life has taught me that I have a mechanism inserted somewhere impervious to experience that prevents me from doing everything that could redound to my advantage and forces me to follow the most foolish impulses and the most harmful tendencies natural…
Mendoza, prey to carnal desires.
19. The only thing that was not left over was the money to pay so many people or the suppliers of raw materials. Madrid, according to a phrase coined by a satirical newspaper of the time, held the strings of the bag with its teeth.
Another reflection on commercial activity in the capital of Spain.
20. Human beings, like insects, go through three phases or stages of development: children, workers and retirees. The children do what they are told, the workers too, but they are paid for it, the retirees receive some emoluments, but they are not allowed to do anything...
About the stages of life.
21. We are more given to working hard and to being talkative, detached, modest, courteous and affectionate and not rude, selfish, petulant, rude and uncouth, as we would undoubtedly be if we did not depend so much on falling into grace for survival.
On the kind nature of the human being.
22. People were unhappy before I was born and they will be when I am dead. It is true that I have caused the misfortune of some, but: have I been the true cause of that misfortune or a mere agent of fatality?
Another reflection of The City of Wonders.
23. The language of human beings is laborious and childish... They speak at length and in shouts, accompanied by horrible gestures and grimaces. Even so, his capacity for expression is extremely limited, except in the field of blasphemy and profanity...
Noise instead of arguments.
24. I don't know when I fell in love with you or how such a thing happened, because I try to remember and it seems to me that I have always loved you and I try to understand and I find no reason in the world not to love you.
A beautiful declaration of love.
25. This is not a poor country. This is a country of poor people. In a poor country, everyone manages as best they can with what they have. Not here. Here counts what one has or does not have.
About Spain and its miseries.
26. It was admirable to see how those potentates, so hard hit by the financial crisis as he had just found out by reading a newspaper, they continued to maintain the appearance of waste and revelry for the sole purpose of not sowing discouragement in the markets stock.
About the stock market.
27. The first time he came attracted by the novelty. I read the notice in the press and I said to myself: Fulgencio, here is a companion in misfortune: out of her element, exposed to public ridicule for a handful of money.
Fragment of Three Lives of Saints.
28. The newspapers did not speak more than this. Each of the visitors, upon returning to their country, they said, becomes an apostle and propagator of what they have seen, heard and learned.
Another great paragraph from The City of Wonders.
29. Oh, Barcelona, he said with a voice broken by emotion, how beautiful it is! And to think that when I saw it for the first time of all this that we see now there was almost nothing!
About his hometown, Barcelona.
30. In the end," he concluded miserably, "he no longer knew what he was doing there. He just knew that whatever it was, it didn't make any sense. "What you have just described," I told him, "is called work."
An absurd situation.
31. Because Catalans always talk about the same thing, that is, about work... There are no people on Earth who are more fond of work than the Catalans. If they knew how to do anything, they would be the masters of the world.
A rather sharp phrase against the mentality of the Catalan people.
32. The Spanish speak by the elbows. I'm doing it myself, you see. He kept a moment of silence to show that he could put a stop to the national vice and then continued lowering his voice.
In this fragment he talks about the Spanish idiosyncrasy.
33. At the table sat an old woman with a parchment face, so petite and warm that it was hard for her to distinguish her from the cushions and pads distributed irregularly throughout the room to hide the deterioration of the furniture.
Cat fight.
34. I prefer the barbarism of an inquisitor willing to burn a painting for judging it sinful, to the indifference of someone who only cares about the dating, background or price of that same chart.
A matter of principle.
35. Throughout my existence I have been forced to solve some mysteries, always forced by circumstances and especially by people when in the hands of these were those.
Autobiographical phrase.
36. (...) Westerners are bad mathematicians. Look Europe. Through arrogance they go from being a group of provinces at war to becoming an empire. He exchanged national currency for the euro and there began decadence and ruin.
One of those phrases by Eduardo Mendoza in which he explains some cultural characteristics.
37. Philosophy and religion are fine, of course, but they are for the rich, and if you are rich, why do you want philosophy and religion?
curious reasoning
38. Experience has taught me that, in an investigation such as the one I was carrying out, little is achieved by force or daring and much by perseverance.
Being constant is the best way.
39. It's actually me who has lost. I thought that being bad I would have the world in my hands and yet I was wrong: the world is worse than me.
Small fragment of the city of prodigies.
40. José Antonio is inconsistent, the party has no program or social base, and his famous eloquence consists of speaking with salt shaker without saying anything concrete...
Madrid, 1936.
41. For centuries we had foreign domination and we starved like hell. Now we have learned our lesson, we have known how to take advantage of the opportunity and we have become masters of half the world.
On ethical misery in El enredo de la bolsa y la vida.
42. Eastern rhetoric, too subtle, I admit. Often you don't know what they're talking about and they've already screwed you, as Sun Tzu said.
Sarcastic phrase to keep in mind.
43. With the same pleasure I would have eaten a portion of sardines, but I also had to give up that because spending money was not within my budget.
About the miseries of his early years.
44. He had a thick lower lip, pendulous and wet, which made him moisten the gummed back of the stamps.
Describing one of the characters in The Truth About the Savolta Case.
45. Spring was heralded by blowing into the air that fragrance that has something of the pleasant vertigo of madness...
From the same book as the previous fragment.
46. He had boundless confidence in his ability to overcome any setback and take advantage of any obstacle.
One of her most widely read works for young people: No news from Gurb.
47. (...) This fact had already been commented on in the capital's newspapers. These same newspapers had reached the painful but unquestionable conclusion that this was the case. The communications between Barcelona and the rest of the world, both by sea and by land, make it more suitable than any other city on the Peninsula to attract foreigners, they said.
Fragment of the city of prodigies.
48. María Rosa Savolta examined the contradictory figure of the maid with a severe gaze. What was that being of steppe rudeness and dolmen garb doing, flat, eyebrowed, toothy and mustachioed in a room where each and every one of the objects rivaled each other in finesse and delicacy? And who would have put on that starched cap, those white gloves, that apron edged with pointed lace? the lady wondered.
A mystery to solve.
49. This award is a sign of success, and the desire for success is unreasonable. Before being achieved, success does not exist, it is only a reason for anxiety; but when it arrives it is worse: after it is obtained, life does not stop and success overshadows it; no one can constantly repeat success and after a very short time success becomes a heavy burden; it is needed again, constantly, but now knowing its uselessness.
To take into account.
50. I believed that those who wanted me badly would not dare attack my integrity in broad daylight and instead crowded, but would try to lure me where they could carry out their noxious purposes with full force. discretion. He had, therefore, to avoid loneliness and night. The first would be relatively easy for me and the second absolutely impossible, except for a celestial miracle that neither my beliefs nor my past conduct authorized me to implore.
About enemies and how to deal with them.
51. It is hard for all of us to recognize that in an irrecoverable moment we bet everything on a single spin of roulette before learning the rules of the game. I also believed that life was something else. Then you continue playing, you win and lose alternately, but nothing is the same anymore: the cards are already are marked, the dice are loaded, and the tokens only change pockets for the duration of the game. evening. Life is like that and it is useless to describe it as unfair after the fact.
A phrase to take life easy.
52. A criminal is not a hero, but an abject being who abuses the weakness of his neighbor. I was destined to follow this path until the saddest of outcomes if the chance encounter with literature had not opened a crack through which I could emerge into a better world. I have nothing more to add. Literature can rescue grim lives and redeem terrible acts; conversely, terrible acts and degraded lives can rescue literature by breathing into it a life that, if it did not possess it, would make it a dead letter.
Literature in its purest form, from the pen of Eduardo Mendoza.
53. (...) Velázquez painted this painting at the end of his life. Velázquez's masterpiece and also his testament. It is a reverse court portrait: it represents a group of trivial characters: a girl, servants, dwarfs, a dog, a couple of officials and the painter himself. In the mirror the figure of the Kings, the representatives of power, is reflected blurred. They are outside the painting and, therefore, outside of our lives, but they see everything, they control everything, and it is they who give the painting its raison d'être.
Madrid, 1936.
54. The author of this article and of those that will follow has set himself the task of revealing in a concise and accessible way to the simple minds of the workers, even the most illiterate, those facts that, due to having been presented to the public in an obscure and diffuse manner, after the camouflage of rhetoric and the profusion of figures more appropriate to the understanding and understanding of the scholar that of the reader avid for clear truths and not for arithmetic intricacies, remain still unknown to the working masses who are, however, their most victims. main.
Another fragment of The truth about the Savolta case, his magnum opus.
55. The army remains, of course. But Azaña knows him well: he has not been Minister of War for nothing. He knows that the military, under its terrible appearance, is inconsistent, fickle and malleable; on the one hand they threaten and criticize and on the other they whine to get promotions, assignments and decorations; they are crazy about perks and are jealous of those of others: everyone believes that another with less merit has passed them by; in short, that they allow themselves to be charmed like children. (...) All the weapons (artillery, infantry, engineers) are out to kill each other, and it is enough for the Navy to do one thing, for aviation to do the opposite.
About Madrid in the first half of the 20th century.
56. They are not reliable rumors, because they come, as always, from people who are envious or fanciful or stupid, or all three at the same time, but the mere fact that these people have come up with such a lie indicates that the truth must not be very far from the truth. lie.
You should never believe a rumor.
57. The waiter's face was painted black from the constant staunching of sweat with the glassware drying cloth.
Description contained in The entanglement of the bag and life.
58. Be careful with the ears -I said as a climax-; they always appear where one least expects them.
Extract from one of his books.
59. From that time I remember joyfully throwing time overboard, hoping that the balloon would take flight and take me to a better future.
About his young days.
60. You always think better with a full stomach, say those who have a stomach.
Ironic phrase that invites reflection.
61. And what is the truth? Sometimes the opposite of a lie; other times, the opposite of silence.
Sometimes just screaming embodies reality.
62. The feeling is the root and the sustenance of the deep ideas.
Philosophical phrase about emotions.
63. No human behavior needs precedents to be possible.
Culture is everything, sometimes.
64. The early vocations are trees with many leaves, few trunks and fewer roots.
Great poetic prose.
65. In literature class they taught us some things that were of little use to me then and have been of little use to me today.
Unfortunately, interest in art and literature cannot be explained or taught.
66. I have ever wondered if Don Quixote was crazy or if he pretended to be so to transgress the gates of a small, coarse and closed in on itself.
The limits of madness and sanity.
67. I wanted to do like Alonso Quijano: travel the world, have impossible loves and undo wrongs.
Like the famous character of Cervantes.
68. There is another type of humor in Cervantes' writing, which is not so much in the writing or in the dialogues as in the writer's gaze.
Another reflection on the work of the manchego.
69. I believe that I am a model of good sense and I believe that the others are like a shower, for this reason I live perplexed and frightened by how the world is.
About his vision of things.
70. A novel is what it is: neither the truth nor the lie.
Neither fiction, nor reality, but a middle ground.