With their souls of patent leather, they come down the road. Hunched and nocturnal, where they breathe they impose, silence of dark rubber, and fear of fine sand.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the haunting and mysterious nature of life, portraying beings that evoke both fear and awe.
In this quote, Federico Garcia Lorca evokes a vivid and surreal imagery of figures moving through the darkness. Their 'souls of patent leather' suggest a shiny, artificial quality, while the juxtaposition of 'silence of dark rubber' and 'fear of fine sand' conveys a sense of foreboding and the weight of existence. Lorca's use of nocturnal imagery emphasizes the unknown and the hidden aspects of life, prompting the reader to reflect on the darker elements of the human experience.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the complexities of human nature.
The wounds were burning like suns at five in the afternoon, and the crowd broke the windows At five in the afternoon. Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon! It was five by all the clocks! It was five in the shade of the afternoon!
There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers' battle with the heavens that cover them. Snow, rain, and mist highlight, drench, or conceal the vast towers, but those towers, hostile to mystery and blind to any sort of play, shear off the rain's tresses and shine their three thousand swords through the soft swan of the fog.
The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink - and in drinking understand themselves.
Death laid its eggs in the wound
The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish.
New York is something awful, something monstrous. I like to walk the streets, lost, but I recognize that New York is the world's greatest lie. New York is Senegal with machines.
On the stage, the characters express themselves more through words than images. So the arguments of the characters and the tension between characters - words have to be used to express that, and I love that about theater.
When you are writing fiction your task is to reflect the fullest complications of the world
When I see a story, I ask: is this something I'd like to be in? Is this something I'd like to see? And if I'd like to see it, would I like to tell it?
You have to make sure you have the characters you want. That's really the most complicated part.
Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.
I like books that are fat and full.
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