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Quotes by Writer
"I'm preparing for a multimedia theater piece, Airport Music, that's coming up in New York City."
72
"When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool."
71
"I had a terrible vision: I saw an encyclopedia walk up to a polymath and open him up."
70
"If you can't pay for a thing, don't buy it. If you can't get paid for it, don't sell it. Do this, and you will have calm and drowsy nights, with all of the good business you have now and none of the bad. If you have time, don't wait for time."
69
"A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once more intense and less articulate than those of a gregarious man."
Man,
69
"Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage."
69
"Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy."
68
"I was born in ancient times, at the end of the world, in a patriarchal Catholic and conservative family. No wonder that by age five I was a raging feminist - although the term had not reached Chile yet, so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me."
68
"Women are oppressed in the east, in the west, in the south, in the north. Women are oppressed inside, outside home, a woman is oppressed in religion, she is oppressed outside religion."
68
"It is difficult to understand these people who democratically take part in elections and a referendum, but are then incapable of democratically accepting the will of the people."
67
"Relativism is neither a method of fighting, nor a method of creating, for both of these are uncompromising and at times even ruthless; rather, it is a method of cognition."
65
"What kind of world is this that can send machines to Mars and does nothing to stop the killing of a human being?"
65
"Only when you are lost can love find itself in you without losing its way."
64
"My identity is linked to my grandmother, who's pure Filipino, as pure as you can probably get. And that shaped my imagination. So that's how I identify."
64
"The period that I could consider the most important in my literary work came about beginning with the Revolution, and in a certain way, developed as a consequence of the Revolution. But it was also a result of the counterrevolutionary coup of November 1975."
64
"It is reality that awakens possibilities, and nothing would be more perverse than to deny it."
64
"I had no books at home. I started to frequent a public library in Lisbon. It was there, with no help except curiosity and the will to learn, that my taste for reading developed and was refined."
63
"When I start to write, words have become physical presence. It was to see if I could bring that private world to life that found its first expression through reading. I really dislike the romantic notion of the artist."
63
"Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts."
61
"Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread."
61
"Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness."
60
"Abstention means you stayed at home or went to the beach. By casting a blank vote, you're saying you have a political conscience but you don't agree with any of the existing parties."
60
"Knowledge has outstripped character development, and the young today are given an education rather than an upbringing."
60
"You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists."
60
"I tend to turn down books originally published as e-books. As for selling books directly to e-book publishers, I would do so only if all traditional publishers had turned them down."
60
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