Julio Cortázar was a famous Argentine writer and thinker born in 1914 This writer is considered a master of magical novels and poetry, being one of the most innovative authors of his time.
Of his works we could highlight some such as: The Prizes, Manuel’s Book, Bestiary or The Secret Weapons. Although he spent his childhood and adolescence in Argentina, Cortázar chose to obtain French nationality as a symbol of rebellion against the military dictatorship that his country was experiencing at that time.
Great phrases and reflections by Julio Cortázar
For all those who may not know the work of this great writer, We have made a selection of famous phrases by Julio Cortázar which without a doubt no one can miss.
1. Even the unexpected ends in habit when you have learned to endure it.
In life we learn to deal with even the most unbearable situations.
2. Every morning is the blackboard where I invent you and draw you.
Every day that we are lucky enough to be able to live is a new day that we can make the most of.
3. I think we all have a little bit of that beautiful madness that keeps us going when everything around us is so insanely sane.
Having a little madness in our life can remind us that we are still alive, it doesn’t have to be anything negative.
4. The explanation is a well-dressed mistake.
Even if an error has a plausible explanation, it is still an error.
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 cannot be that we are here so that we cannot be.
Life has the meaning that we want to give it, it is up to 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 live we will always retain some hope within us, the hope of a better tomorrow.
8. I increasingly suspect that agreeing is the worst of illusions.
When a couple argues, they show appreciation for each other.
In life as a couple we learn to live with the other person and know how to respect their ideas.
10. My interest soon became analytical. Tired of wondering, I wanted to know; That 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 can still have felt it.
12. Thinginess, 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 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’ll tell you who you are.
14. It made me sick to think like that, to once again be thinking everything that it was enough for others to feel.
Society can often upset us and make us feel very fed up with the life we live.
15. Let me in, let me see someday as your eyes see.
Who wouldn’t like to spend a day in the life of their partner? Something that many of us have thought about at some point.
16. Nothing is lost if you have the courage to proclaim that everything is lost and you have to start again.
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. Furthermore, any living being deserves our respect and consideration.
18. Books are becoming the only place in the house where you can still be calm.
Reading is an activity that we should all know how to value and practice regularly.
19. And look, we barely knew each other and life was already plotting what was necessary to thoroughly disentangle us.
Life without knowing why separates us from many of our closest friends and family.
20. That is why we will never be the perfect couple, the postcard, if we are not able to accept that only in arithmetic does two come from one plus one.
The perfect relationship does not exist, a relationship consists of accepting the other person as they are.
21. Insignificant gifts like a kiss at an unexpected moment or a piece of paper written in a hurry. They may be worth more than a gem.
The smallest things can convey the true love that a person feels towards us.
22. Who is willing to move, to lose control, to decenter, to discover themselves?
In order to lead the life we want, we must be brave and adventurous people.
23. I don’t give up anything, I simply do what I can so that things give up on me.
Being consistent with who we are will take us on the path to where we really want to be.
24. For my part, I had already gotten used to modestly exceptional things happening to me.
Life allows us to get used to all kinds of misadventures, it can be truly incredible what we mature in its course.
25. Somewhere there must be a garbage dump where explanations are piled up. Only one thing is disturbing in this fair panorama: what may happen the day someone manages to explain the garbage dump as well.
There are no possible explanations for a bad action; we must know how to banish hypocrisy from our lives.
Our colleagues are not our friends, true friends are extremely difficult to find.
27. Words are never enough when what needs to be said overwhelms the soul.
We will not be able to explain the most heartbreaking emotions that we will experience throughout our lives in words, as these will be much more complex than any words we can say.
28. When it rained, the water entered my soul.
Throughout our lives we will experience the different situations we find ourselves in very differently, because over time we change and evolve.
29. I’m not going to tire you with more poems. Let’s say I told you clouds, scissors, kites, pencils, and maybe you ever smiled.
Cortázar was also a great poet, with internationally acclaimed works such as: Except for the twilight.
30. Poor love is the one that feeds on thought.
True love is an emotion that is born from our heart, not our mind. It is something that we cannot explain rationally.
31. In reality, the truly difficult things are all that people think they can do at any given moment.
There are many complicated tasks that we think we are completely capable of doing, especially until we try to do them.
32. If the human personality does not acquire all its strength, all its power, among which the playful and the erotic are fundamental drives, no revolution will complete its path.
Knowing 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 stagnate, to do so 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 here.
When a relationship doesn’t suit us, we have to get over it and move on with our lives.
35. And if we bite ourselves, the pain is sweet, and if we drown in a brief and terrible simultaneous absorption of breath, that instantaneous death is beautiful.
As we can see in this phrase, 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 enjoyed him with such intimacy that he was not capable of thinking or choosing.
Certain places have the power to make us lose touch with reality.
38. You look for what you call harmony, but you look for it right there where you just said it is not there, among friends, family, in the city…
In order to find spiritual fulfillment, sometimes we must cross certain limits that we usually impose on ourselves.
39. My evil way of understanding the world helped me laugh under my breath
Our particular way of understanding the world around us can bring us a very personal humor.
40. But the bad thing about the dream is not the dream. The bad thing is what they call waking up.
When we wake up we become aware that what we have experienced 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 true triumph.
Some people are better to lose sight of, our lives will gain from it.
43. If you fall I will pick you up and if you don’t, I will sleep with you.
A very nice phrase to indicate to our partner that we will always be with them.
44. He felt a kind of resentful tenderness, something so contradictory that it must be the truth itself.
Many times 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 believe, the distance between them and us.
According to Darwin, man comes from the same evolutionary branch as the ape. Do you think that is true?
46. Behind this sad spectacle of words, the hope that you read me trembles unspeakably, that I have not completely died in your memory.
As we can see in this phrase, Cortázar hoped that that special person for him would read his words.
47. The only thing certain was the weight in the pit of my stomach, the physical suspicion that something was not right, that it had almost never been right.
Certain sensations tell us when something is not going well, it is a kind of sixth sense that some people have.
48. In literature there are no good themes and bad themes: there is only a good or bad treatment of the theme.
Indeed, for a topic to be valued as good, the writer has to be good to be able to address 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 very well says, 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, an emblem of those who go out at night without a fixed purpose, the reason for those who kill compasses.
Who hasn’t gone out for a walk aimlessly some night? Cortázar also lived some nights wandering in his life.
52. And deep down there is death if we don’t run and arrive first and understand that it no longer matters.
We will all have to live that moment as personal as our own death will be, we must know how to live with it.
53. What many people call love consists of choosing a woman and marrying her. They choose her, I swear, I’ve seen them. As if you could choose in love, as if it weren’t a lightning bolt that breaks your bones and leaves you staked in the middle of the patio.
We cannot choose who we fall in love with, because the feelings we feel are not the result of any thought.
54. It is enough for me to look at you to know that I am going to soak my soul with you.
Some people just by seeing 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.
Coincidences can bring many positive things to our lives, the best is always the result of a coincidence.
56. What I like about your body is sex. What I like about your sex is your mouth. What I like about your mouth is your tongue. What I like about your language is the word.
For this writer, the word was the main source of attraction that a person could possess.
57. Since you didn’t know how to hide, I quickly realized that to see you the way I wanted it was necessary to start by closing my eyes.
In order to have an honest relationship with our partner we must accept them as they are.
58. She loved the incredible troubles she was always in 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 comment on something else that we cannot reach, and that is there within the reach of the leap that 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 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 like such a lie was true.
Some things that we thought were not true, over time we discover to be great truths.
62. What do you want? Love asks for street, asks for wind, does not know how to die in solitude.
When we are in love we feel much more active, because our hormones are through the roof.
63. Your love torments me, which does not serve as a bridge for me because a bridge does not stand on only one side…
Love has great power over us, the power to make us unhappy or completely happy.
64. Music! Melancholic food for those of us who live on love.
Music can help us explore our own feelings, as it allows us to connect with them much more easily.
65. I think I don’t love you, that I only 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 who we know are impossible for us, but that’s life, we don’t choose who we fall in love with.
66. Culture is the profound exercise of identity.
A very profound phrase that perfectly summarizes the human cultural phenomenon.
67. Being alive always seems like the price of something.
Some of his stories are truly distressing.
68. In short, since I was little, my relationship with words, with writing, is no different from my relationship with the world in general. I seem to have been born not to accept things as they are given to me.
Nonconformity was always a constant in both his life and his work.
69. Partial total: I love you. Grand total: I love you.
Cortazar’s declarations of love have fascinated millions of readers over the decades.
70. When friends understand each other well, when lovers understand each other well, when families understand each other well, then we believe in harmony.
Interpersonal relationships, couples and family units are some of the themes of Cortázar’s work.
71. You pay too much attention to a few metaphors.
Fantasy and surrealism were profusely cultivated in Cortazar’s work.
72. And this is how those who enlighten us are the blind.
One of the many famous phrases that we find in the book “Hopscotch”
73. He used axes as penicillin.
In “Hopscotch” we can find truly special phrases and scenarios.
74. You couldn’t, he said. You think too much before doing anything. —I start from the principle that reflection must precede action, silly.
Fragment of “Hopscotch”, one of the most important works of 20th century literature.
75. You look at me, you look at me closely, closer and closer and then we play cyclops, we look at each other closer and closer and the eyes get bigger, they get closer to each other, they overlap and the cyclops look at each other, breathing in confusion, The mouths meet and fight warmly, biting each other with their lips, barely resting their tongues on their teeth.
Cortázar’s descriptions are among the most notable in the history of literature in Spanish.
76. Sometimes I feel that between two people who beat each other in the face there is much more understanding than between those who are there watching from the outside.
Sometimes the disagreement between two people creates relationships much more intense than love.
77. The scorpion stabbing itself with its stinger, tired of being a scorpion but needing its scorpion to kill the scorpion.
The reflections of this great Argentine author have fascinated entire generations of readers for decades.
78. Happiness had to be something else, something perhaps sadder than this peace and this pleasure, an air like that of a unicorn or an island, an endless fall into immobility
Happiness, sadness, love and relationships were some of the topics that Cortazar discussed.
79. She smiled without surprise, convinced like me that a chance meeting was the least casual thing in our lives.
The stories that Cortázar’s books tell are always special and fantastic, sometimes surreal.
80. Patriotism Why not nationalism, to which it so easily leads? It causes me horror to the extent that it attempts to subject individuals to an almost astrological fatality of ancestry and birth.
Cortázar criticized all types of nationalism and extremism throughout his career.
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