quotes by Short Story Writer Quotes

“But that afternoon he asked himself, with his infinite capacity for illusion, if such pitiless indifference might not be a subterfuge for hiding the torments of love.”

“Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.”

“Amputees suffer pains, cramps, itches in the leg that is no longer there. That is how she felt without him, feeling his presence where he no longer was.”

“She felt so old, so worn out, so far away from the best moments of her life that she even yearned for those that she remembered as the worst… Her heart of compressed ash, which had resisted the most telling blows of daily reality without strain, fell apart with the first waves of nostalgia. The need to feel sad was becoming a vice as the years eroded her. She became human in her solitude.”

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

“His biggest misgiving came from his concern about the loud crash that was bound to occur and would probably create, if not terror, at least anxiety behind all the doors. But that would have to be risked.”

“Taught him the only thing he had to learn about love: that nobody teaches life anything.”

“No matter what, nobody can take away the dances you've already had.”

“Between the covers of the books that no one had ever read again, in the old parchments damaged by dampness, a livid flower had prospered, and in the air that had been the purest and brightest in the house an unbearable smell of rotten memories floated.”

“Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have.”

“Tricks you need to transform something which appears fantastic, unbelievable into something plausible, credible, those I learned from journalism. The key is to tell it straight. It is done by reporters and by country folk.”

“When you have a healthy appetite there is no such thing as bad bread.”

“He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister's. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. He still saw that outside the window everything was beginning to grow light. Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his nostrils streamed his last weak breath.”

“Paths are made by walking”

“...they enjoyed the miracle of loving each other as much at the table as in bed, and they grew to be so happy that even when they were two worn-out old people they kept on blooming like children and playing together like dogs.”

“The only thing worse than bad health is a bad name.”

“A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.”

“God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.”

“But what if all the tranquility, all the comfort, all the contentment were now to come to a horrifying end?”

“Photography concentrates one's eye on the superficial. For that reason it obscures the hidden life which glimmers through the outlines of things like a play of light and shade. One can't catch that even with the sharpest lens.”

“In a way, I was safe writing”

“Thus they went on living in a reality that was slipping away, momentarily captured by words, but which would escape irremediably when they forgot the values of the written letters.”

“and the two of them loved each other for a long time in silence without making love again.”

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?”

“Towards the avoidance of a piece of verbal confusion: What is intended to be actively destroyed must first of all have been firmly grasped; what crumbles away crumbles away, but cannot be destroyed.”

“It is impossible to explain. But what I like most is to eat.”

“What is written is merely the dregs of experience.”

“To all, I would say how mistaken they are when they think that they stop falling in love when they grow old, without knowing that they grow old when they stop falling in love...”

“opened the door a crack wide enough for the entire world to pass through .”

“For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death.”

“Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself.”

“I have spent my life resisting the desire to end it.”

“In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.”

“What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is different from what I ought to think and so it goes further into the deepest darkness.”

“One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom.”

“They say ignorance is bliss.... they're wrong”

“Picasso only registers the deformities which have not yet penetrated our consciousness. Art is a mirror which goes 'fast' like a watch - sometimes.”

“Children's lies are signs of great talent.”

“A man should have two wives: one to love and one to sew on his buttons.”

“There is a goal but no way; what we call the way is mere wavering.”

“A picture of my existence... would show a useless wooden stake covered in snow... stuck loosely at a slant in the ground in a ploughed field on the edge of a vast open plain on a dark winter night.”

“The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write.”

“Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair.”

“Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one’s ears and listens, say in the night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.”

“There they lay, but not in the forgetfulness of the previous night. She was seeking and he was seeking, they raged and contorted their faces and bored their heads into each others bosom in the urgency of seeking something, and their embraces and their tossing limbs did not avail to make them forget, but only reminded them of what they sought”

“From the moment I wrote 'Leaf Storm' I realized I wanted to be a writer and that nobody could stop me and that the only thing left for me to do was to try to be the best writer in the world.”

“No sooner said than done - so acts your man of worth.”

“As I kissed her the heat of her body increased, and it exhaled a wild, untamed fragrance.”

“Dread of night. Dread of not-night.”

“Leop­ards break in­to the tem­ple and drink all the sac­ri­fi­cial ves­sels dry; it keeps hap­pen­ing; in the end, it can be cal­cu­lat­ed in ad­vance and is in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the rit­ual.”