Quotes by Antonio Porchia
Although most of the writing section on these pages is my original work, I must share at least some of the work Antonio Porchia. His quotes are short, seemingly simple, yet extremely profound. I hope you will enjoy them as I do!
—Carli Muñoz
Antonio Porchia (November 13, 1885 – November 9, 1968) was an Argentinian poet. He was born in Conflenti, Italy, but, after the death of his father in 1900, moved to Argentina. He wrote a Spanish book entitled Voces ("Voices"), a book of aphorisms. It has since been translated into Italian and into English (by W.S. Merwin, Copper Canyon Press, 2003), French, and German. A very influential, yet extremely succinct writer, he has been a cult author for a number of renowned figures of contemporary literature and thought such as André Breton, Jorge Luis Borges, Roberto Juarroz and Henry Miller, amongst others. Some critics have paralleled his work to Japanese haiku and found many similarities with a number of Zen schools of thought.
“I stop wanting what I am looking for, looking for it.”
“You know so much about me and yet you don’t understand me. To know is not to understand. We could know everything and still not understand anything”
“Following straight lines shortens distances, and also life.”
“You think you are killing me. I think you are committing suicide.”
“The fear of separation is all that unites.”
“A door opens to me. I go in and am faced with a hundred closed doors.”
“Almost always it is the fear of being ourselves that brings us to the mirror.”
“They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.”
“A thing, until it is everything, is noise, and once it is everything it is silence.”
“I know what I have given you, I do not know what you have received.”
“We become aware of the void as we fill it.”
“One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.”
“The flower that you hold in your hands was born today and already it is as old as you are.”
“They have stopped deceiving you, not loving you. And it seems to you that they have stopped loving you.”
“Whatever I take, I take too much or too little; I do not take the exact amount. The exact amount is no use to me.”
“Some things become such a part of us that we forget them.”
“My bits of time play with eternity.”