Best 33 quotes of Antonio Tabucchi on MyQuotes

A l'intérieur de ce corps vivait l'âme d'une intellectuelle et poète dont personne n'avait le soupçon. Within this body lived the soul of an intellectual and poet, which nobody had suspected.

An intellectual is going to have doubts, for example, about a fundamentalist religious doctrine that admits no doubt, about an imposed political system that allows no doubt, about a perfect aesthetic that has no room for doubt.

But democracy isn't a state of perfection. It has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.

But I don't think I have any particular talent for prediction, because when you have three or four elements in hand, you don't have to be a genius to reach certain conclusions.

Doubts are like stains on a shirt. I like shirts with stains, because when I'm given a shirt that's too clean, one that's completely white, I immediately start having doubts.

Eco sees the intellectual as an organizer of culture, someone who can run a magazine or a museum. An administrator, in fact. I think this is a melancholy situation for an intellectual.

I don't go for people who lead full and satisfying lives.

I don't have any doubts either about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Perhaps some more should be added to the list, but I don't have the slightest doubt about human rights.

I live quietly at home among my family and friends.

In a novel, my feelings and sense of outrage can find a broader means of expression which would be more symbolic and applicable to many European countries.

I prefer insomnia to anaesthesia.

It's very useful when politicians have doubts because there are so many choices to be made in the world.

I've always been drawn to tormented people full of contradictions.

I vividly remember the stories my grandfather told me about the carnage of the First World War, which people tend to forget was one of the worst massacres in human history.

I was born in the Second World War during the Nazi invasion of my country.

Like a blazing comet, I've traversed infinite nights, interstellar spaces of the imagination, voluptuousness and fear. I've been a man, a woman, an old person, a little girl, I've been the crowds on the grand boulevards of the capital cities of the West, I've been the serene Buddha of the East, whose calm and wisdom we envy. I've known honor and dishonor, enthusiasm and exhaustion. ...I've been the sun and the moon, and everything because life is not enough.

Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.

Literature is my life of course, but from an ontological point of view. From an existential point of view, I like being a teacher.

My books are about losers, about people who've lost their way and are engaged in a search.

No, I'm happy to go on living the life I've chosen. I'm a university teacher and I like my job.

People with lots of doubts sometimes find life more oppressive and exhausting than others, but they're more energetic - they aren't robots.

Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.

personally I don't trust literature that soothes people's consciences.

Rather than regret for what I have written, I feel regret for what I shall never be able to read.

The most important basis of any novel is wanting to be someone else, and this means creating a character.

There are some fundamental values it's impossible to be wrong about.

The salt of any interesting civilization is mixture.

Xenophobia manifests itself especially against civilizations and cultures that are weak because they lack economic resources, means of subsistence or land. So nomadic people are the first targets of this kind of aggression.

(...) después el abuelo ponía el disco de uno que tocaba la trompeta y se entusiasmaba, se acariciaba sus bigotes blancos siguiendo el ritmo, escucha a este músico, decía, escucha cómo hace latir la vida en su trompeta, la vida es aliento, muchachito, en principio era el verbo, y los curas quién sabe lo que se han creído, pero el verbo es aliento, muchachito, nada más que aliento... en la vida hay que amar la vida, y a ti tiene que gustarte siempre la vida, recuérdalo, la muerte les gusta a los fascistas...

Ma anche se pensò così non si sentì rassicurato, sentì invece una grande nostalgia, di cosa non saprebbe dirlo, ma era una grande nostalgia di una vita passata e di una vita futura, sostiene Pereira.

Piensa en cuán falsa es la escritura, con su implacable prepotencia hecha de palabras definitivas, de verbos, de adjetivos que aprisionan las cosas, que las blanquean en una fijeza vítrea al igual que una libélula que ha permanecido en una piedra durante siglos mantiene la apariencia de la libélula pero ya no es una libélula. Así es la escritura, que tiene la capacidad de separarnos varios siglos del presente y del pasado próximo: fijándolo. Pero las cosas son difusas, piensa Amelia, y por eso están vivas , porque son difusas y sin perfiles y no se dejan aprisionar por las palabras.

Sí, dijo Pereira, pero si ellos tuvieran razón mi vida no tendría sentido, no tendría sentido haber estudiado Letras en Coimbra y haber creído siempre que la literatura era la cosa más importante del mundo, no tendría sentido que yo dirija la página cultural de ese periódico vespertino en el que no puedo expresar mi opinión y en el que tengo que publicar cuentos del siglo XIX francés, ya nada tendría sentido, y es de eso de lo que siento deseos de arrepentirme, como si yo fuera otra persona y no el Pereira que ha sido siempre periodista, como si tuviera que renegar de algo.

This story, which takes place one a Sunday in July in a hot, deserted Lisbon, is the Requiem that the character I refer to as “I” was called on to perform in this book. Were someone to ask me why I wrote this story in Portuguese, I would answer simply that a story like this could only be written in Portuguese; it's as simple as that. But there is something else that needs explaining. Strictly speaking, a Requiem should be written in Latin, at least that's what tradition prescribes. Unfortunately, I don't think I'd be up to it in Latin. I realised though that I couldn't write a Requiem in my own language and I that I required a different language, one that was for me A PLACE OF AFFECTION AND REFLECTION.