English Translation Quotes

“But that's how it is when you start wanting to have things. Now I just look at them, and when I go away I carry them in my head. Then my hands are always free, because I don't have to carry a suitcase.”
― Tove Jansson, Elizabeth Portch

“I'm going to go where my heart takes me, even if it's a messy road.”
― Ha Myung-hee (writer), said by Dr. Jung YoonDo, Doctors (닥터스)

“I saw bundles of dead raggedy reeds hanging down from the broken ceilings that had depicted heaven. I looked deep into the house’s diseased and dying maw.

It was like it had been putting on an act the whole time and was only now showing itself as it, in reality, had always been: a hollow, drafty cavern, rancid and rotting at its core.”
― Willem Frederik Hermans, Het behouden huis

“I'm just a normal college student who likes to read.
But if i were to write a book with me as the main character...
It would be a tragedy.”
― Sui Ishida, Tokyo Ghoul, Tome 1

“... for although people can be made worse off by all other gifts, correct reasoning alone can only be for the good.”
― Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

“Si-Chi's hairline was straight as a highway. If you drove along it, it would lead to the most sinister truth in the world.”
― Lin Yi-Han, 房思琪的初戀樂園

“When you begin a new story, your job is to envision, to try to glimpse stuff that doesn't as yet exist. That's what writing is, going out to meet the ghosts of the future. Not out of the past, not the ones that are dead and buried. Ghosts of the future, those who don't exist yet.”
― Cédric Klapisch

“When you begin a new story, your job is to envision, to try to glimpse stuff that doesn't as yet exist. That's what writing is, going out to meet the ghosts of the future. Not out of the past, not the ones that are dead and buried. Ghosts of the future, those who don't exist yet.”
― Cédric Klapisch (screenplay writer); spoken by Xavier Rousseau in Casse-tête Chinois (Chinese Puzzle

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“The war began in 1972. That was the year I awoke to a profound truth: no one on this earth is indispensable, except the enemy. ¶ Without an enemy, human beings are poor things indeed. Their lives are ordeals, crushed between insignificance and boredom. ¶ The enemy is the Savior. His mere existence is enough to revitalize humanity. Thanks to the enemy, that unfortunate accident called life becomes epic.”
― Amélie Nothomb, Le Sabotage amoureux

“Humanity’s elite were little girls. Humanity existed so that they could exist. ¶ Women and buffoons were crippled. Their bodies contained errors of construction that could inspire no other reaction but laughter. ¶ Only little girls were perfect. Nothing stuck out from their bodies, no grotesque appendages, no idiotic protuberances. They were of marvelous design, streamlined to present no resistance to life. ¶ Of no material utility, they were the most necessary of all because they embodied humanity’s beauty – its real beauty, that which makes living a summer breeze, where nothing clashes and the body is pure celebration from head to foot. One has to have been a little girl to know how exquisite it is to have a body.”
― Amélie Nothomb, Le Sabotage amoureux

“…this story happened in China to the extent that it was permitted to do so—which is to say very little. ¶ It is a ghetto story, a tale of double exile: exile from our native country (which for me was Japan, since I was convinced that I was Japanese), and exile from China which surrounded us but from which we were cut off, by virtue of our status as profoundly unwanted guests. ¶ Make no mistake, however, in the end, China has the same weight in these pages as the Black Death had in Bocaccio’s Decameron: though hardly mentioned, it RAGES throughout.”
― Amélie Nothomb, Le Sabotage amoureux

“I have scarcely felt the progression of my death; it began in the tissues of my left hand; it has advanced greatly and yet it is so gradual, so continuous, that I do not notice it.

I am losing my sight. My sense of touch has gone; my skin is falling off; my sensations are ambiguous, painful; I try not to think about them.

When I stood in front of the screen of mirrors, I discovered that I have no beard, I am bald. I have no nails on my fingers or toes, and my flesh is tinged with
rose. My strength is diminishing. I have an absurd impression of the pain: it seems to be increasing, but I feel it less.”
― Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel

“Even though English is the universal language of earth, due to its primitive colonial escapades, and indeed the most convenient, it is neither the most beautiful nor the most soulful language on earth.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch

“এতটা পুড়িনি আগে;  
সেইবারও জ্বেলেছিলে,  
মোমবাতি মনে ক'রে।  
আমিও চাদর ভেবে তোমাকে জড়িয়ে গায়,  
সারারাত কাটিয়েছি গঙ্গার ধারে।  

I haven't burned this much before;
Even that time you lit (me) ,
Thinking of (me) as a candle.
I too, thinking of you as a shawl, wrapped you around my body,
(and) spent the whole night by the Ganges.”
― Mriganka Sekhar Ganguly

“এ চিঠি কোথায় লেখা ? 
কারো কোনো ঠিকানা ছিল না।  
তবু যতবার পড়ি, 
দেখি চামড়া খসে পড়ে, 
যেন বা পলেস্তারা, 
বহুদিন এ শরীর, 
মেরামত করতে আসো নি।

Here's the English translation of this part of the poem:

Where was this letter written?
No one had any address.
Yet, every time I read (it),
I see the skin peeling off,
As if it were plaster,
For many days this body,
You haven't come to repair.”
― Mriganka Sekhar Ganguly

“बात कैसे पूरी करें,
जब ख़ामोशी ही जज़्बात बयां करने में कम पड़ जाए।

"How to complete the talk, when even silence falls short?”
― Mriganka Sekhar Ganguly

“রাজ্য নাচে, দেশ নাচে
হাড়িতে জলও নাচে
শুধু জলে চালটি নাচে না।

Hindi Translation:

राज्य नाचे, देश नाचे
हांडी में पानी भी नाचे
सिर्फ पानी में चावल नहीं नाचते।

English Translation:

The state dances, the country dances
Even the water in the pot dances
Only the rice in the water doesn't dance.”
― Mriganka Sekhar Ganguly

“हम लोरी को ग़म में लिपटे,
सुखाते थे छतों पर।
टूटी हुई चप्पल से,
सजाते थे अपना घर।
ताकि नज़र न लग जाए।

We used to wrap lullabies in sorrow,
And dry them out on the rooftops.
With broken slipper,
We’d decorate our home —
So that no evil eye could fall upon it.”
― Mriganka Sekhar Ganguly

“We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos... We are humanitarian and chivalrous; we don't want to enslave other races, we simply want to bequeath them our values and take over their heritage in exchange... We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is.”
― Stanislaw Lem