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Quotes by Novelist
"I am the kind of writer that people think other people are reading."
149
"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."
149
"I'm the kind of writer that people think other people are reading."
148
"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."
148
"I think writers rush in where everybody is very frightened to tread."
147
"Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger."
147
"It is only the consciousness of a nonexistence which allows us to realize for moments that we are living."
146
"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."
146
"There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant."
145
"If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn't concern the central issues, it wouldn't be worth publishing."
145
"Forgiveness is the giving, and so the receiving, of life."
145
"No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object."
144
"Once men are caught up in an event, they cease to be afraid. Only the unknown frightens men."
143
"There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world."
141
"Argentine political life is like the life of an ant community or an African forest tribe: full of events, full of crisis and deaths, but life is always cyclical, and the year ends as it begins."
141
"The aeroplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth."
141
"I came to London. It had become the center of my world and I had worked hard to come to it. And I was lost."
140
"Science and literature give me answers. And they ask me questions I will never be able to answer."
139
"We made no inquiries about India or about the families people had left behind. When our ways of thinking had changed, and we wished to know, it was too late. I know nothing of the people on my father's side; I know only that some of them came from Nepal."
135
"A book is not completed till it's read."
135
"Time is change; we measure its passing by how much things alter."
132
"Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself."
131
"Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more priviledged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex."
130
"You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet."
128
"Many have changed so much that they have lost the magic of the dream that carried them on their own bootstraps."
127
"Joseph and his mother come from the black kings who were before the white man."
124
"One day you will wake up and there won't be any more time to do the things you've always wanted. Do it now."
122
"To give up the task of reforming society is to give up one's responsibility as a free man."
122
"Every gift from a friend is a wish for your happiness."
119
"Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another."
116
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