Great Novelist Quotes

“He is a free and secure citizen of the world because he is on a chain that is long enough to allow him access to all parts of the earth, and yet not so long that he could be swept over the edge of it.”

“The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble than to be walked upon.”

“So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.”

“They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”

“Writing sustains me. But wouldn’t it be better to say it sustains this kind of life? Which doesn't mean life is any better when I don’t write. On the contrary, it is far worse, wholly unbearable, and inevitably ends in madness. This is, of course, only on the assumption that I am a writer even when I don’t write - which is indeed the case; and a non-writing writer is, in fact, a monster courting insanity.”

“He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.”

“May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.”

“i discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind, but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature.”

“Nobody deserves your tears, but whoever deserves them will not make you cry.”

“A lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth.”

“She searched the truth with an anguish almost as great as her terrible fear of finding it .”

“There was no sleeper more elegant than she, with her curved body posed for a dance and her hand across her forehead, but there was also no one more ferocious when anyone disturbed the sensuality of her thinking she was still asleep when she no longer was.”

“The fact is that being seductive is an addiction that can never be satisfied.”

“Nobody is worth crying for, and those that are worth it will not make you cry.”

“He was carrying a suitcase with clothing in order to stay and another just like it with almost two thousand letters that she had written him. They were arranged by date in bundles ties with colored ribbons, and they were all unopened.”

“the bells of glory that announced to the world the good news that the uncountable time of eternity had come to an end”

“The only thing he could do to stay alive was not to allow himself the anguish of that memory. He erased it from his mind, although from time to time in the years that were left to him he would feel it revive, with no warning and for no reason, like the sudden pang of an old scar.”

“The people of the United States are one of the people I most admire in the world. The only thing I don't understand is why a country that manages to do so well cannot do better in choosing its president.”

“Don't struggle so much, the best things happen when not expected.”

“There [is] no innocence more dangerous than the innocence of age.”

“An artisan without memories, whose only dream was to die of fatigue in the oblivion and misery of his little gold fishes.”

“He was weary of the uncertainty of the vicious circle of that eternal war that always found him in the same place, but always older, wearier, even more in the position of not knowing why, or how, or even when.”

“I was asked the other day if I would be interested in the Nobel Prize, but I think that for me it would be an absolute catastrophe. I would certainly be interested in deserving it, but toreceive it would be terrible. It would just complicate even more the problems of fame. The only thing I really regret in life is not having a daughter.”

“There is no greater glory than to die for love.”

“Life is not what one lived, but what One remembers and how One remembers it in order to recount it”