The 66 Best Phrases of Almudena Grandes

Almudena Grandes is one of the most well-known and acclaimed Spanish writers. Her elegant and lyrical prose has catapulted her to fame.

Almudena Grandes’ phrases express great sensitivity towards everyday stories, towards the different nuances that can color our way of experiencing emotions, and towards the way in which relationships change us.

The best phrases of Almudena Grandes

Below we will see a selection of text fragments, reflections and phrases from this writer.

1. They are not corpses yet and they are scared to death…

About the paradoxes of existence: breathing is not synonymous with living.

2. You have to be very brave to ask for help, you know? But you have to be even braver to accept it.

About the burden that pride can be for us.

3. The mother superior repeated it every now and then, you have to tear off the branches before they reach trunks.

Bad habits must be stopped as soon as possible.

4. Omitting truths is nothing more than a refined variety of lies.

Morally, knowingly hiding information is breaking the truth.

5. Just a Spanish story, one of those that ruins everything.

One of Almudena Grandes’ phrases that show his tragic vision of the country.

6. The same love that made us loyal, that made us better, was ruining everything.

Depending on the context, the same emotions can be constructive or destructive

7. Many things happened that night, words, gestures, silences that he would remember all his life.

A sample of Almudena Grandes’s stylized prose.

8. (…) That sad smell, of moss and wet earth, that perfumes the buildings under construction.

About a very specific feeling.

9. How strange your brothers-in-law are, right? -Yes, they are from Madrid. -Will that.

A sample of his sense of humor.

10. It had been too much love, as much as I could give, more than was convenient for me. It was too much love. And then, nothing.

Retrospective look at an elation.

11. Therefore, we can only affirm with certainty that the whole is equal to the sum of the parts when the parts ignore each other.

Another reflection on the way in which conflicts and indifference towards others destroy the social fabric.

12. A good writer can write about anything and can create literature on any topic and a bad writer does not have that ability.

A piece of advice about this artistic facet.

13. Time will put everything in its place, I will die and you will regret what you told me a moment ago, but until then I am not willing to lose you…

When emotions are above the rational and conscious analysis of things.

14. The earth rotated on itself and around the sun just below our naked and linked bodies. Beyond it was everything else. Beyond was the winter, the ice, the slippery and dirty condition of an ugly, earthy snow, stained with mud and only half undone by the footsteps of people, many people innocent and guilty, loyal and traitors, conscious or not. the wound that their steps were opening on the icy sidewalks of the future of their children, their grandchildren, a guilty, desolate horizon, different from the clean landscape and cleverly wrapped in a beautiful paper of bright colors that they would once believe they inherited.

Passage of description more focused on sensations than on material things.

15. Seeing him sleeping next to him, he could only think of one thing; Tomorrow maybe I won’t have it, tomorrow it will be gone, tomorrow I will be alone in this bed… Every minute weighed, every minute mattered, every minute expanded until it projected itself into the limits of a small, personal eternity.

About anticipatory fear of loss

16. What is it for? Well, to understand how things happen. Does that seem little to you? To try to formulate rules that alleviate the unbearable anguish of our existence in this miserable wisp of the unfathomable immensity of the universe that is the world.

About the different ways in which we reduce the degree of uncertainty.

17. I loved her so much that at that moment, while I felt like I was losing ground under my feet and the emptiness was exacting a much higher price in the center of my stomach than the pleasure of all dizziness, the certainty that I would never I would feel disgust or shame again when I remembered the luminous disproportion of her naked body, she managed to maintain a thread of warmth in my heart numb with cold.

This fragment of text expresses an example of traditional romantic love, based largely on the unconditional nature of the bond.

18. What savagery, what horror is exile, and this horrible defeat that never ends, and destroys from the outside and in, and erases the plans of the interior cities, and perverts the rules of love, and overflows the limits of hate to turn the good and the bad into a single thing, ugly, and cold, and burning, immobile, how horrible this immobile life, this river that does not flow, that never finds a sea to get lost in.

A text with great expressive power by this writer.

19. Joy had made me strong, because (…) it had taught me that there is no work, no effort, no guilt, no problems, no fights, not even mistakes that are not worth facing when the goal is finally achieved. , is the joy.

About the strength conferred by the spirit of hard work.

20. Although deserts bloom very slowly, grass sprouts sooner in the ground than in the eyes of those who contemplate it, and that is why time has to pass, a lot of time, for someone to remember one fine day that apples do not grow in the earth, that apples necessarily fall from the trees.

Even where there seems to be only destruction lies the seed of creation.

21. Then it would be she who would cry, she who would despair, she who would learn to pay for herself the true price of beautiful things.

The dialectic of suffering in relationships: it is not always the same person who loses the most.

22. I was still convinced that I had seen her there for the first time, Raquel Fernández Perea, without tricks, without decorations, without excuses, perhaps a beauty more beautiful than her masks.

Almudena Grandes talks about an intimate look at the person beyond their impostures.

23. The difference between eroticism and pornography, apart from etymology, has to do with the attitude of the recipient of the message, it has to do with the attitude of the reader.

In cultural products, not only the product itself matters, but also the expectations and role of the person who consumes them.

24. The expectation of happiness is more intense than happiness itself, but the pain of a consummated defeat always exceeds the intensity anticipated in its worst calculations.

A tragic asymmetry.

25. Since I was little I have always wanted to be a writer, I don’t remember myself wanting to be anything else, because since I was little what I have liked most in this life is reading.

An autobiographical note of this artist.

26. The only thing I wanted was to grow old next to her, to see her face when I woke up every morning, to see her face for a moment before falling asleep each night, and to die before her.

Almudena describes here romantic aspirations that are very common

27. I think first novels are always strange because when you write your first book you don’t even know if you are writing a book or a text that is going to end up in a drawer.

About the experience of writing the first works in the world of literature.

28. There was everything, and everything was worth it as long as an imprecise, universal excitement ran through the veins of the attendees like a bright and thick liquid, capable of making their blood brighter and thicker.

The description of a context of debauchery.

29. To write, you first had to read. Starting to write is a consequence of having read a lot, it is like going through the mirror, like when Alice goes through the mirror. Reading and writing are mirror acts.

It is necessary to expand one’s own cultural level to have something to say.

30. We had been happy walking on a tightrope, we had flourished in an infection of contradictions, we had found ourselves in a labyrinth of paradoxes without ever looking at the ground, without ever looking at the sky, without looking.

About a situation in which sensations reign and their intensity hides the need for planning.

31. Some image that I stumble upon, almost unintentionally, tells me that it has a story behind it. And what I do is turn over these images that promise a story until I find a way to open it, although that doesn’t always happen.

This fragment tells us about a very personal way of seeing patterns in seemingly simple or chaotic information.

32. You have to write about what you know, what you have close to you and what interests you. Then what happens is the miracle of communication, which is based on the principle that all human beings are basically very similar.

To truly convey You have to talk about what has emotional implications for yourself.

33. All human beings look alike because they are vulgar creatures, very simple after all. And among the things they have in common, there is not only sex.

The personality of each individual prints very relative differences between each of us.

34. Humans are beings who desire and desperation takes away their own essence, desiccates them, guts them, ruins them, expels them from themselves along the temperate and deceptive path that leads to the destiny of things, to the fatigue of vegetables. dusty, buried and inert minerals.

A reflection on the human condition.

35. We were all afraid, the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated, all of us, very afraid.

There are situations in which fear does not understand class.

36. The last days of summer everyone became very sad, so much so that Raquel felt that they were not returning, but that they were leaving, that they were exiled from the bougainvilleas and oleanders, from the orange and olive trees, from the smell of the sea and of the ships in the port, of the whitewashed walls and the white houses, of the flowered windows and the shadow of the vines, of the gold of oil, of the silver of sardines, of the subtle mysteries of saffron and cinnamon, of their own language and the color, the sun, the light, the blue, because for them returning was not returning home, because you could only return to Spain, although no one ever dared to say that word.

A narrative fragment full of expressiveness.

37. It’s been a long time, you’ll tell me, and you’ll be right, but we all still carry the dust of the dictatorship on our shoes, you too, even if you don’t know it.

The psychological well that they leave certain historical traumas takes a while to leave.

38. It is the others you have to be afraid of, the ones who let you guess which way they are looking. Those are the ones who always look in the opposite direction to what you imagine.

Uncertainty about the intentions of others can be a source of fear.

39. We all let ourselves be fooled at the same time, and not because we are stupid, but because good people are easy to fool.

It is not possible to know everything, and therefore, we manage our ignorance.

40. Education, education and education, they said; It was like a motto, a slogan repeated many times, the magic formula to fix the world, to change things, to make people happy. They had lost everything, they had gotten ahead working in positions that were far below their capabilities, academies, bakeries, telephone switchboards, but they had that left. They always had that.

One point of view can lead to demanding only education, leaving other needs unattended.

41. Fear also excludes dignity, generosity, the sense of justice, and even harms intelligence, because it alters the perception of reality and lengthens the shadows of all things. Cowardly people are afraid even of themselves.

Fear eliminates many human virtues.

42. Beauty is a monster, a bloody deity that must be appeased with constant sacrifices.

Aesthetics can obsess us.

43. Then he thought that silence perhaps weighs more on those who remain silent than uncertainty on those who do not know.

The fact of not being able to express yourself can be more painful than feeling ignorance

44. Because there are hungers much worse than not having anything to eat, harsh conditions much more cruel than not having a roof under which to shelter, poverty more suffocating than life in a house without doors, without tiles or lamps. She didn’t know it, but I did.

A reflection on the cruel side of life.

45. Normally, when I write a novel or a collection of short stories, I usually start from images: I walk down the street and I value each person I don’t know as a character; each new situation, as an argument; Every place I haven’t been, I value as a setting.

A comment on the creative process.

46. ​​It’s funny how when someone writes an erotic novel everyone assumes that they have a tremendously intense (sexual) life and when someone writes murder novels nobody assumes that they have killed their neighbor, nor is a writer who writes science supposed to fiction has had contacts in the third phase.

The sense of humor applied to the way we perceive the relationship between art and artist.

47. Finishing a novel is something dramatic. The longer it takes me to write the endings, the more I suffer. Achieving the end of a novel has something of a pulse, because you have been able to handle it. Finishing it is like being evicted from your house. I confess that one of the most terrible moments of my life is the day after finishing a novel.

Another of Almudena Grandes’s phrases about how she has experienced writing.

48. It was too much love. Too big, too complicated, too confusing, and risky, and fruitful, and painful. As much as I could give, more than was convenient for me. That’s why it broke. It didn’t run out, it didn’t end, it didn’t die, it just broke, it collapsed like a tower that was too high, like a bet that was too high, like a hope that was too high.

Recap of a love story

49. He didn’t say anything, he kept smiling. She reached out and turned the ignition key. The engine started. The windows were foggy. It must have been freezing outside, a curtain of steam escaping from the hood. He leaned back against the seat, looked at me, and I realized that the world was falling apart, the world was falling apart on me.

Fragment of a passage full of feelings.

50. I stayed sitting on his knees. She put her arms around me and kissed me. The mere contact of her tongue reverberated throughout my body. My back of hers shivered. He is the reason for my life, I thought. It was an old thought, already trite, formulated hundreds of times in his absence, violently rejected in recent times, because it was poor, because it was petty and because it was pathetic.

Another of Almudena Grandes’ texts based on the romantic.

51. The maturity in my work is that now when I start a novel I know it one hundred percent. I have a notebook with the story resolved and the structure closed, I know how many chapters it has, what happens in each one and even how many pages it will have and until that moment I don’t sit down to write. But then there is an inherent emotion in writing, it is an adventure and when you feel yourself writing it may happen that what you have decided before is of no use to you.

A comment on the artistic evolution of the writer.

52. The verb believe is a special verb, the widest and narrowest of all verbs.

A phrase that invites reflection about one’s own expectations.

53. Not so long ago, in this same neighborhood, happiness was also a way of resisting.

The portrait of a life linked to the local.

54. María Gracia is also alone. She has also been married, she has not had children either, her partner has also abandoned her, she has not found another, she has also lived better, nor has she ever lived worse than now.

This text shows the lyrical style in which the writer portrays many of her characters.

55. When I started working, I was already tired, but that was an advantage and not a disadvantage. The routine of the house, the children, the student parents’ meetings, the Christmas costumes, the carnival costumes, the end of the year costumes, the appointments with the tutors, the vaccination schedule and everything else, exhausted her in such a way that weekdays didn’t seem so much like it.

A way of turn around negative situations in life

56. If I were younger I wouldn’t be so worried, because for crises, which I have had to deal with, my son. But we could, we were strong, we were used to suffering, to emigrating, to fighting.

About a life marked by struggle.

57. But we Spaniards, who for many centuries knew how to be poor with dignity, had never known how to be docile.

A look at the history of Spain.

58. Since nothing comes for free, cognac has been assigned to another race. Now he looks like a redskin, his face in general is reddish, his cheekbones in particular, full of broken veins that branch out day after day to already conquer the base of his nose.

An original description.

59. Because action is the enemy of reflection and I couldn’t think anymore.

A way to explain someone’s behavior from a duality.

60. We are in a neighborhood in the center of Madrid. Its name does not matter, because it could be any of a few old neighborhoods, with venerable areas, others rather ancient. This one does not have many monuments but it is one of the beautiful ones, because it is alive.

There is an aesthetic quality that goes beyond the material.

61. I knew that it wasn’t exactly like that, that wasn’t true, but the truth also disappeared, and I kept thinking the same thing, and it was pleasant, I felt like someone, safe, in moments like that, it was curious.

Forgetfulness can lead us to self-deception.

62. And I was alone, I felt alone, unable to speak, which is perhaps the worst form of loneliness.

a reflection about loneliness

63. To be a woman is to have women’s skin, two X chromosomes and the ability to conceive and feed the offspring that the male of the species engenders. And nothing more, because everything else is culture.

About sexual differences.

64. Thirty years ago, children inherited poverty, but also the dignity of their parents, a way of being poor without feeling humiliated, without ceasing to be worthy or fighting for the future.

A nuance about the different ways of experiencing misery.

65. Self-pity is a very hard drug.

It can be addictive.

66. Immortal history does strange things when it intersects with the love of mortal bodies.

The contradiction between what is perpetual and what has an expiration date.