The 65 best quotes by Julio Cortázar

We review the most acclaimed thoughts of this unique writer.

Julio Cortázar was a famous Argentine writer and thinker born in 1914.. This writer is considered a master of the magic novel and poetry, being one of the most innovative authors of his time.

From his works we could highlight some of them as: Los premios, Libro de Manuel, Bestiario or Las armas secretas. Although he spent his childhood and adolescence in Argentina, Cortázar chose to obtain the French nationality as a symbol of rebellion against the military dictatorship that his country was living at that time.

• We recommend you to read: "The 10 best poems of Julio Cortázar".

Great quotes and reflections of Julio Cortázar

For those of you who may not know the work of this great writer, we have made a selection of the 65 famous phrases of Julio Cortázarthat without any doubt no one can miss.

1. Even the unexpected becomes a habit when you have learned to put up with it.

In life we learn to deal with even the most unbearable situations.

2. Every tomorrow is the blackboard where I invent and draw you.

Every day that we are lucky enough to live is a new day that we can make the most of.

3. I think we all have a bit of that beautiful madness that keeps us going when everything around us is so insanely sane.

Possessing a little bit of craziness in our lives can remind us that we are still alive, it doesn't have to be a negative thing.

4. The explanation is a well-dressed mistake.

Even if a mistake has a plausible explanation, it is still a mistake.

5. I was a tango lyric for your indifferent melody.

Tango is a very popular style of music in Argentina, the land of this great writer.

6. It can't be that we are here so that we can't be.

Life has the meaning we want to give it, it depends on us what we do with it.

7. Probably of all our feelings the only one that is not truly ours is hope. Hope belongs to life, it is life itself defending itself.

As long as we have life we will always keep some hope within us, the hope of a better tomorrow.

8. I increasingly suspect that agreement is the worst of illusions.

When a couple argues, they show appreciation for each other.

9. There is nothing like sharing a pillow, it clears up ideas completely; sometimes it even puts an end to them, which is a peace of mind.

In a couple's life we learn to live with the other person and to know how to respect his or her ideas.

10. My interest soon became analytical. Tired of wondering, I wanted to know; this is the invariable and disastrous end of every adventure.

Absorbing knowledge changes our personal perspective of the world.

11. I don't know how to talk about happiness, but that doesn't mean I haven't had it.

Explaining what happiness is for us can be very complicated, but we may still have felt it.

12. Cosiness, that unpleasant feeling that where our presumption ends, our punishment begins.

We should value the people around us, just as we want them to value us.

13. You were always my mirror, I mean that to see myself I had to look at you.

The friendships and relationships we have identify us, as the saying goes, tell me who you hang out with and I will tell you who you are.

14. I was disgusted to think this way, once again to be thinking everything that others felt.

Society can disgust us many times and make us feel very fed up with the life we live.

15. Let me in, let me see someday how your eyes see.

Who wouldn't like to spend a day in their partner's life? Something many of us have thought about at one time or another.

16. Nothing is lost if you have the courage to proclaim that all is lost and you have to start over.

We must recognize our own mistakes and know when we have to start something again.

17. Look, there is only one way to kill monsters; accept them.

We are all people, monsters do not exist. Besides, any living being deserves our respect and consideration.

18. Books are becoming the only place in the house where you can still be quiet.

Reading is an activity that we should all know how to value and practice assiduously.

19. And look, we hardly knew each other and life was already plotting what was needed to get us apart in detail.

Life, without knowing why, separates us from many of our closest friends and relatives.

20. That is why we will never be the perfect couple, the postcard, if we are not able to accept that only in arithmetic is two born from one plus one.

The perfect couple relationship does not exist, a relationship consists of accepting the other person as he/she is.

21. Insignificant gifts such as a kiss at an unexpected moment or a paper written in a hurry. They can be valued more than a piece of jewelry.

The smallest things can convey the true love that a person feels for us.

22. Who is willing to move, to be out of control, to be off-center, to discover himself?

To be able to lead the life we desire, we must be courageous and adventurous people.

23. I do not renounce anything, I simply do what I can so that things renounce me.

Being consistent with who we are will lead us on the path to where we really want to be.

24. For my part, I had become accustomed to modestly exceptional things happening to me.

Life allows us to get used to all kinds of misfortunes, it can be really amazing how much we mature in the course of it.

25. Somewhere there must be a dump where explanations are piled up. There is only one thing that worries us in this fair panorama: what might happen the day someone manages to explain the garbage dump.

For a bad action there are no possible explanations, we must know how to banish hypocrisy from our lives.

26. People think they are friends because they share a few hours a week on a sofa, a movie, sometimes a bed, or because they have the same job at the office.

Our partners are not our friends, real friends are extremely difficult to find.

27. Words are never enough when what needs to be said overflows the soul.

The most heartbreaking emotions that we will experience throughout our lives cannot be explained in words, for they will be far more complex than any words we can say.

28. When it rained, the water came up to my soul.

Throughout our lives we will experience the different situations that we encounter in very different ways, because with time we change and evolve.

29. I will not tire you with more poems. Let's say I told you clouds, scissors, kites, pencils, and maybe you smiled.

Cortázar was also a great poet, with internationally acclaimed works such as: Salvo el crepúsculo.

30. Poor love that feeds on thought.

True love is an emotion that comes from our heart, not from our mind. It is something we cannot explain rationally.

31. In reality the really difficult things are everything that people think they can do at every moment.

There are many complicated tasks that we believe ourselves completely capable of carrying out, especially until we try to do them.

32. If the human personality does not acquire all its strength, all its potency, among which the playful and the erotic are fundamental drives, no revolution will succeed.

To know how to express ourselves in all our essence is something very important, we should not limit ourselves by anything or anyone.

33. We would fall into a dialectic of magnet and filing, of attack and defense, of ball and wall.

We must not let a conversation become stagnant, for that we must do our part.

34. And I will say the words that are said, and I will eat the things that are eaten, and I will dream the things that are dreamed, and I know very well that you will not be there.

When a relationship does not suit us, we have to get over it and move on with our lives.

35. And if we bite the Pain is sweet, and if we drown in a brief and terrible simultaneous absorption of breath, that instant death is beautiful.

As we can see in this sentence, Julio Cortázar's poetic capacity is very great.

36. We walked without looking for each other, but knowing that we were walking to find each other.

We all have the feeling that there is an ideal person for us.

37. The island invaded him and he enjoyed it with such intimacy that he was not able to think or to choose.

Certain places have the power to make us lose touch with reality.

38. You are looking for what you call harmony, but you are looking for it right there where you just said it is not, among friends, family, in the city...

In order to find spiritual fulfillment, sometimes we must cross certain limits that we tend to impose on ourselves.

39. My evil way of understanding the world helped me to laugh under my breath.

Our particular way of understanding the world around us can bring with it a very personal mood.

40. But the bad thing about sleep is not sleep. The bad thing is what they call waking up.

When we wake up we become aware that what we have lived was nothing more than a simple dream.

41. Why not accept what was happening without trying to explain it, without establishing the notions of order and disorder?

Sometimes we have no choice but to accept what life offers us.

42. There are absences that represent a real triumph.

Some people it is better to lose sight of them, our life will gain with it.

43. If you fall I will pick you up and if not, I will go to bed with you.

A very nice sentence to indicate to our partner that we will always be with her.

44. He felt a kind of spiteful tenderness, something so contradictory that it must be the truth itself.

Often the emotions we feel can be somewhat contradictory, an emotion that only we understand.

45. The anthropomorphic features of a monkey reveal, contrary to what most people believe, the distance that goes from them to us.

According to Darwin, man comes from the same evolutionary branch as the monkey. Do you think this is true?

46. Behind this sad spectacle of words, there trembles unspeakably the hope that you will read me, that I have not completely died in your memory.

As we can see in this sentence, Cortázar harbored the hope that that special person would read his words.

47. The only certainty was the weight in the pit of my stomach, the physical suspicion that something was wrong, that it had almost never been right.

Certain sensations tell us when something is wrong, it is a kind of sixth sense that some of us possess.

48. In literature there are no good themes and bad themes: there is only a good or a bad treatment of the theme.

Indeed, for a theme to be valued as good, the writer has to be good to be able to deal with it as it deserves.

49. Everything I would like from you is so little in the end, because in the end it is everything.

A phrase that indirectly says what we want from the person to whom we dedicate it: everything.

50. You don't choose the rain that will soak you to the bone when you leave a concert.

As this phrase says so well, people do not control the weather, and the same happens with many other things that happen to us.

51. By then I had already realized that searching was my sign, emblem of those who go out at night with no fixed purpose, reason of the compass killers.

Who has not gone out at night to wander aimlessly? Cortázar also lived some night wandering in his life.

52. And there in the background is death if we do not run and get there before and understand that it no longer matters.

We will all have to live that moment as personal as our own death, we must know how to live with it.

53. What many people call love consists in choosing a woman and marrying her. They choose her, I swear, I have seen them. As if one could choose in love, as if it were not a bolt of lightning that breaks your bones and leaves you staked in the middle of the yard.

We cannot choose who we fall in love with, for the feelings we feel are not the fruit of any thought.

54. It is enough for me to look at you to know that with you I will soak my soul.

Some people, just by looking at them, we know what we want from them, simply without knowing why an instant connection arises in us.

55. And I must say that I fully trust in the chance of having met you. That I will never try to forget you, and that if I did, I would not succeed.

Chance can bring many positive things into our lives; the best things are always the result of chance.

56. What I like about your body is the sex. What I like about your sex is your mouth. What I like about your mouth is your tongue. What I like about your tongue is the word.

For this writer the word was the main source of attraction that a person could possess.

57. As you didn't know how to dissimulate I realized immediately that to see you as I wanted it was necessary to start by closing your eyes.

In order to have an honest relationship with our partner we must accept him/her as he/she is.

58. She loved the improbable trouble she was always getting into because of the failure of the laws in her life.

Our way of being and our principles will make our life easier or more complicated.

59. Life, as a commentary on something else that we do not reach, and that is there within reach of the leap we do not take.

To live life as we really want, we must be brave and act when the situation requires it.

60. Come sleep with me: we will not make love, he will make love to us.

Being able to spend the night with our partner is something we all want to do every day of our lives.

61. How could I suspect that what seemed so untrue was true.

Some things that we thought were not true, we eventually discover to be great truths.

62. What do you want? Love asks for the street, it asks for wind, it does not know how to die in solitude.

When we are in love we feel much more active, because we have the hormones by the clouds.

63. I am tormented by your love, that does not serve me as a bridge because a bridge is not supported by only one side...

Love has a great power over us, the power to make us unhappy or completely happy.

64. Music! Melancholy food for those who live by love.

Music can help us explore our own feelings, as it allows us to connect with them much more easily.

65. I don't think I love you, I just want the obvious impossibility of loving you. Like the left glove in love with the right hand.

Many times we fall in love with people we know are impossible for us, but life is like that, we do not choose who we fall in love with.