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Quotes by Novelist
"The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know."
35
"The heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good."
35
"Somehow, the painting soothed him. It verified his fears. But it also informed him that fear was wonderful."
34
"To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession."
34
"When thinking about companions gone, we feel ourselves doubly alone."
34
"No, absolutely not, writing doesn't have to be like a jigsaw puzzle, it can be a very linear undertaking."
34
"The architecture of our future is not only unfinished; the scaffolding has hardly gone up."
34
"If you shut up truth, and bury it underground, it will but grow."
33
"Whatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn't fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will - with luck - come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise."
33
"Traveling is one expression of the desire to cross boundaries."
32
"The things that have come into being change continually. The man with a good memory remembers nothing because he forgets nothing."
32
"This is unusual for me. I have given readings and not lectures. I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true."
32
"A nobler example, because a less personal one, of the pinch of poverty, is when it prevents the accomplishment of some cherished scheme for the benefit of the human race."
31
"What breaks capitalism, all that will ever break capitalism, is capitalists. The faster they run the more strain on their heart."
31
"We have to stop and be humble enough to understand that there is something called mystery."
31
"Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it."
31
"What was past was past. I suppose that was the general attitude."
31
"That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do."
31
"There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth."
31
"Loving is not just looking at each other, it's looking in the same direction."
31
"I think writers rush in where everybody is very frightened to tread."
30
"No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object."
30
"As a child I knew almost nothing, nothing beyond what I had picked up in my grandmother's house. All children, I suppose, come into the world like that, not knowing who they are."
30
"It is only the consciousness of a nonexistence which allows us to realize for moments that we are living."
29
"The sky is one whole, the water another; and between those two infinities the soul of man is in loneliness."
29
"Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source."
29
"Once men are caught up in an event, they cease to be afraid. Only the unknown frightens men."
29
"Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood."
29
"The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it."
28
"All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there."
28
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