“It was a time I slept in many rooms, called myself by many names. I wandered through the quarters of the city like alluvium wanders the river banks. I knew every kind of joy, ascents of every hue. Mine was the twilight and the morning. Mine was a world of rooftops and love songs.”
“Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none”
“Be aware of the high notes, of the blissful faces and their soft messages, and listen for the silent message of a highly decorated gift.”
“Through it [literature] we know the past, govern the present, and influence the future.”
“You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin , or even vagueness - ignorance, credulity - helps your enjoyment of these things.”
“இலக்கணம் பின்னால் ஊர்ந்து ஊர்ந்து வரும், இலக்கியம் முன்னால் பறந்து சென்றுகொண்டிருக்கும்”
“From whichever side I start, I think I am in an old place where others have been before me.”
“The world they had built was accepted, and as they kept walking together the mountains moved in admiration”
“The writer who develops a beautiful style, but has nothing to say, represents a kind of arrested esthetic development; he is like a pianist who acquires a brilliant technique by playing finger-exercises, but never gives a concert.”
“[...] as Kurt Vonnegut pointed out [...] the literary novel has become extraordinarily privatistic of late. It s as if the big issues (Does God exist? from whence springs decency? what sort of species is Homo Sapiens?) were either settled or not worth discusssing, and serious writers should therefore confine themselves to their various ethnic heritages and interpersonal relationships.”
“Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week.”
“I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.”
“Literature is that which denounces and slashes apart the repressing machine at the level of the signified.”
“إن الناس الجهلة لا يعرفون مدى هذه القوة التي يمكن أن يمدهم بها تدخين الحشيش...إنها قوة تفرض على العقل البشري التركيز على موضوع واحد فقط طالما هو تحت سيطرة الحشيش، فاذا بدأ الحشاش يدخن و هو يفكر مثلا في موضوع مشاكله مع زوجته و أولاده، يظل كل عقله و احساسه و كل خواطره معلقة بهذا الموضوع طوال الفترة التي يقضيها مسطولا كأنه أصبح أستاذا متفرغا لدراسة تخصص فيها”
“...there are only two things that really matter in life. Literature and love.”
“What are we doing to each other? Because I know that I am doing to him exactly what he is doing to me. We are sometimes so happy, and never in our lives have we known more unhappiness.”
“Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not.”