Reinaldo Arenas

Because my Word document of compiled quotations has become too overcrowded and arduous to quickly navigate, I'm launching a Quotation section. 

Reinaldo Arenas, a Cuban novelist, playwright and poet. These are from "The Parade Ends", which through one long paragraph tells a story based off the 1980 Mariel boatlift incident in La Habana when prior to the mass exouds tens of thousands crowded into the Peruvian embassy in hopes of gaining asylum and leaving Cuba. The balance between desperation and unflinching hope in these passages and the tale itself is particularly moving.

"Little by little they pass the time, it passes, or we pass, I am passing. It's not that I'm getting used to it, nor getting adapted, nor accepting it, but I go on surviving."

Despite the seeming interconnectedness of the next quote, which I've only now noticed, the only connection it has is that it's from the same story. It occurs pages later, though by the looks of it here it's the next logical sentence.

"And I go on: because it's not even possible to be sad anymore. Even sadness itself is abolished by the noise, by the constant eruption of cockroaches, the siren of the patrol car, by the what will I eat today, what will I eat tomorrow. Yes, even sadness requires its space, at least, a little place where it can be kept, exhibited, taken out for an airing. In hell it isn't even possible to be sad. You simply live (you die) day by day, I say, I said. And you answered me: write, write all of this down, begin to write everything that you're suffering, starting right now, and you'll feel better. Really, I was thinking of doing that for a long time already, but what for? For you, for yourself, for the two of us, you say. And that's just how it is. Deliriously, angrily, constantly and in minute detail, I go on giving vent to my fear, my fury, my resentment, my hatred, my failure, our failure, our impotence, all the humiliations, swindles, tricks, and finally, simply, the punches, kicks, the constant harassment. Everything, everything. All the terror: on paper, on the white sheet, once filled, carefully hidden above the false roof of the garret, in the dictionaries, or behind the window: my revenge, my revenge. My triumph. Jail to rot, jail to be shipwrecked and never be able to float away, jail to give up, forgetting, not even conceiving that the sea existed, and, much less, the possibility of crossing it...My triumph, my triumph, my revenge."
"Now there is a general panic, because somebody really is firing at us here, inside. But that's not what I continue watching or dodging. I make my way, I go back, because I have to find you; I have to locate you, to reach you, wherever you are. In the middle of this terrorized crowd, hardly able to move, and now almost completely night, I must find you so that you'll see that I came, too, that I had the courage to make it, that I didn't stay behind, that they couldn't annihilate me - annihilate us - completely, and that here I am, here we are, trying again, anew. The two of us. Alive, still alive..."