What are we doing to each other? Because I know that I am doing to him exactly what he is doing to me. We are sometimes so happy, and never in our lives have we...

I once received a letter from an old lady in California who informed me that when the tired reader comes home at night, he wishes to read something that will lift up his heart. And...

The measure of a work of art is how much art it has in it, not how much ‘relevance’. Relevant to whom? Relevant to what? Nothing is more ephemeral than a hot topic.

The main danger is that of supposing that the thing to do is get a mind on the scale of Thomas (Aquinas)’s into your head, a task of compression that will be achieved only at...

The book was in her lap; she had read no further. The power to change one’s life comes from a paragraph, a lone remark. The lines that penetrate us are slender, like the flukes that...

After the birth of printing books became widespread. Hence everyone throughout Europe devoted himself to the study of literature… Every year, especially since 1563, the number of writings published in every field is greater than...

Literature suffers because writers give their books to colleagues who will then write glowing reviews or saccharine introductions.

Writers are not just writers, they are creators of worlds, sculptors of the mind, they are architects of language.

It began in mystery and it will end in mystery, but what a rare and beautiful country lies in between.

Take my books away, and I should be desperate!

The most advertised commodity is not always intrinsically the best; but is sometimes merely the product of a company, with plenty of money to spend on advertising.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

I must warn you that the books I like are not necessarily the ones I think are the best. I like them for various reasons not always easy to explain.

It hadn’t always been this way, that’s a cliché, but it is a cliché for a reason. It’s not like anyone starts a relationship with nothing to say to the other person. No-one wants to...

Bastam poucas palavras para escrever uma história e apenas uma pessoa para a ler.

A history of literature, unlike history as such, ought to list only victories, for its defeats are no victory for anyone.

I do not write with ease, nor am I ever pleased with anything I write. And so I rewrite.

To provoke dreams of terror in the slumber of prosperity has become the moral duty of literature.

It’s no wonder the narcissistic mother will always have a place in literature: she’s a freak of nature.

Had Stella been named anything else, and/or had we lived in any other city besides New Orleans, my desperate call would have been just my desperate call. In that alternate universe the neighbors might have...

The pursuit of truth, not of facts, is the business of fiction.

La calidad literaria es inversamente proporcional al número de lectores.

The only truth is that we cannot speak the truth . The only acceptable viewpoint is that we cannot express a viewpoint.

A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable...

Y así, del mismo modo que un amateur de las letras no debe cometar la imprudencia de embarcarse y tratar de cruzar el piélago literario, así una aficionada a las flores no tiene por qué...

The Booker thing was a catalyst for me in a bizarre way. It’s perceived as an accolade to be published as a ‘literary’ writer, but, actually, it’s pompous and it’s fake. Literary fiction is often...

Thus was born the Incunabula: it was forged by fire and persecution, to preserve and protect until the book might rise, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of demise.

How can you be kissing at a time like this? Have you no respect for the dead?

But the required survey of English literature troubled and disquieted him in a way nothing had ever done before.

Any connoisseur knows you’ve got to be drunk to really enjoy a good romance.

Hai Si Jebat, berpada-padalah engkau membunuh orang beribu-ribu ini, kerana engkau pun akan mati – Laksamana Hang Tuah.

La politique au milieu des intérêts d’imagination, c’est un coup de pistolet au milieu d’un concert.

The parrot had a range of phrases. His own name (‘Niko, Niko’), the name of his original owner and now ‘Stavros’. Occasionally he would also say ‘Panagia mou’, which could be an expression of piety...

People perish. Books are immortal.

I thought I’d been condescended to as an Indian – that was nothing compared to the condescension for writing young adult literature.

Younger than Morini and Pelletier, Espinoza studied Spanish literature, not German literature, at least for the first two years of his university career, among other sad reasons because he dreamed of being a writer.

In learning a language, when from mere words we reach the laws of words, we have gained a great deal. But if we stop at that point and concern ourselves only with the marvels of...

Basically, being alive means keeping yourself ready for the sky to fall in on you at any time. If you start from the assumption that existence is only an ordeal, a test we have to...

Is it a coincidence that stories from the private life became more popular just as the grand hope for public redemption through revolution was beginning to sour? I witnessed a similar shift in taste in...

The most effective way of destroying art is the canonization of one given form. And one philosophy.

The one thing is fiction in a novel and the other thing is reality. With fiction you don’t make a fuss – you can ‘beat it’ and there’s never enough. At least in my opinion...

Literature is always personal, always one man’s vision of the world, one man’s experience, and it can only be popular when men are ready to welcome the visions of others.

Few pleasures, for the true reader, rival the pleasure of browsing unhurriedly among books: old books, new books, library books, other people’s books, one’s own books – it does not matter whose or where. Simply...

The African continent has so many stories to tell, it’s about time they are told, by them – not us.

Life happened because I turned the pages.

Big writers become a kind of shared climate.

Mal denen şeye kendi varlığımız ya da halkın varlığı gibi tuhaf bir ad koymuşuz. Üstelik varlığını kaybetmek insanlar arasında ayıp ve budalalık sayılmış.

Büyükanne daima “Kızağını yazdan, arabanı kıştan hazırla” derdi.

Words are a puzzle; put them together the right way and you get something beautiful.

Within a week I walked the streets of Tel-Aviv, I wandered around Budapest and found myself admiring the Architecture of Paris. That’s the power of great literature.