“I prefer youngsters to be full of life, annoying, noisy, drunk, stupid, rather than in coffins, followed by people bowed with grief.” (77)
“We push open the door. In the window there are funerary plaques and bouquets of artificial flowers. I loathe artificial flowers. A plastic or polyester rose is like a bedside lamp trying to imitate the sun.” (135)
“The darkness has to intensify for the first star to appear.” (208)
“I had my first garden at nine years old. One square meter of flowers. It was my mother who taught me how to sow, water, harvest. I sensed that it would be my thing. She always said to me, ‘Don’t judge each day by what you can pick, but by the seeds you sow.’ .. this garden is seven hundred square meters.. of joy, love, sweat, endeavor, determination, and patience.” (231)
“I was impatient to return to life after [their passing]. With the main one extinguished, the volcano was extinct. But I sensed branches, offshoots growing inside me. Whatever I sowed, I could feel it. I was sowing myself. And yet, the arid soul that was me was much poorer than that of the cemetery vegetable garden. A soil full of gravel. But a blade of grass can grow anywhere, and that anywhere was me. Yes, a root can take hold in tar. All that’s needed is the tiniest crack for life to penetrate the impossible. A little rain, some sun, and then shoots from who knows where, from the wind perhaps, appear.” (248)
***
3/5. Some beautiful passages, a moving story overall. I cried. But the "love" in this book was just "lust" and that was a huge chunk of the novel.. I couldn't get past all those affairs. If you can look past that part, then, this book is beautiful.
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