Tender Is the Flesh Quotes

“Because hatred gives one strength to go on; it maintains the fragile structure, it weaves the threads together so that emptiness doesn’t take over everything.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“The human being is the cause of all evil in this world. We are our own virus.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“She had the human look of a domesticated animal.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“He tried to hate all of humanity for being so fragile and ephemeral but he couldn't keep it up because hating everyone is the same as hating no one.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Cadáver exquisito

“Naming children after their parents is stripping them of an identity, reminding them who they belong to.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“I don't get why a person's smile is considered attractive. When someone smiles, they're showing their skeleton.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“After all, since the world began, we’ve been eating each other. If not symbolically, then we’ve been literally gorging on each other. The Transition has enabled us to be less hypocritical.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“He tried to hate God but he doesn’t believe in God. He tried to hate all of humanity for being so fragile and ephemeral but he couldn’t keep it up because hating everyone is the same as hating no one.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“Everyone says that he fell because he flew too close to the sun,” his father said, “but he flew, do you see what I mean, Son? He was able to fly. It doesn’t matter if you fall, if you were a bird for even just a few seconds.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“there are words that cover up the world.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“know that when I die somebody’s going to sell my flesh on the black market, one of my awful distant relatives. That’s why I smoke and drink, so I taste bitter and no one gets any pleasure out of my death.” She takes a quick drag and says, “Today I’m the butcher, tomorrow I might be the cattle.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“which god should she pray to if her god lets things like this happen.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“His father is a person of integrity, that’s why he went crazy.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“Does this pose a moral dilemma for you? Do you find it atrocious?” he asks. “Not at all. The human being is complex and I find the vile acts, contradictions, and sublimities characteristic of our condition astonishing. Our existence would be an exasperating shade of gray if we were all flawless.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“No one can call them humans because that would mean giving them an identity. They call them product, or meat, or food. Except for him; he would prefer not to have to call them by any name.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“There is something about her he'd like to break”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“Tenía la mirada humana del animal domesticado”.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Cadáver exquisito

“No one can be sure of anything. Let them eat me, I’ll give them horrible indigestion.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“Don’t be an idiot. Can’t you see they’re controlling us? If we eat each other, they control overpopulation, poverty, crime. Do you want me to keep going? I mean, it’s obvious.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“We are the worst kind of vermin, destroying our planet, starving our fellow man.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“How many head do they have to kill each month so he can pay for his father’s nursing home? How many humans do they have to slaughter for him to forget how he laid Leo down in his cot, tucked him in, sang him a lullaby, and the next day saw he had died in his sleep? How many hearts need to be stored in boxes for the pain to be transformed into something else? But the pain, he intuits, is the only thing that keeps him breathing. Without the sadness, he has nothing left.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“How many hearts need to be stored in boxes for the pain to be transformed into something else? But the pain, he intuits, is the only thing that keeps him breathing. Without the sadness, he has nothing left.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“He felt that a slaughterhouse should go unnoticed and blend in with the landscape, that it should never be called what it really is.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“[...] she screams as if the world didn't exist, she screams as if words had split in two and lost all meaning, she screams as if beneath this hell there was another hell, one from which she didn't want to escape.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“Enseñar a matar es peor que matar.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Cadáver exquisito

“The human being is complex and I find the vile acts, contradictions, and sublimities characteristic of our condition astonishing. Our existence would be an exasperating shade of gray if we were all flawless.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“Porque el odio da fuerzas para seguir, mantiene la estructura frágil, entreteje los hilos para que el vacío no lo ocupe todo.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“¿Cuántos corazones tienen que ser guardados en cajas para que el dolor se transforme en otra cosa? Pero el dolor, intuye, es lo único que lo hace seguir respirando. Sin la tristeza, no le queda nada.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“Carcass.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“They gave human meat the name “special meat.” Instead of just “meat,” now there’s “special tenderloin,” “special cutlets,” “special kidneys.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh