Best 22 quotes of Alejandro Zambra on MyQuotes

As a child, all you see is that adults are not playing. Adults are not talking too much. Adults don't want to relate to each other.

Every story, every poem, every written piece is about belonging. There is a me, there is a we, there is an us, and we want to belong to it or we don't want to belong. You can read every story with this as its main focus.

I am still trying to find out things. And I inevitably tell myself the story in different ways every time I think about it.

If you write, and you are really alone (writing is a lonely thing), you learn to be alone without suffering. When you read, you also learn to do this. When you write, you deal with things.

I remember thinking, without pride of self-pity, that I was not rich or poor, that I wasn't good or bad. But that was difficult: to be neither good nor bad. It seemed to me, in the end, the same as being bad.

I think about Chilean literature as a family, because I grew up reading the literature of my country. I feel like I have fathers and stepfathers and a lot of brothers and sisters and distant cousins and all that.

I was a nerdy kid and I was writing and showing other fellows who are still my friends what I was writing. We were sharing that and kept sharing it. The experiences they had were so different than mine.

Literature is about getting in touch. It sounds so hippie, but it really is about sharing stuff. We are a community that doesn't seem to be important for the rest of society, but we are people who want to get in touch - really in touch. We want to be thinking together.

Publishing my book is like giving it away. At first you start talking about it, but you are basically letting go. I won't say it's like giving birth because I haven't given birth. It's more like when your children leave home.

The stories on standardized tests don't have one author, therefore they can never authentically be in the first person. Imagine that! Everywhere, there are these tests that have been written by multiple people.

The ways in which a standardized language test induces storytelling, for example, is the opposite of creative writing; you have to learn a logical way to start a story, whereas in creative writing you may begin at the end or begin at the middle of the story.

We rely too much on the people we share our lives with. We hold them responsible for things they are not even aware of. We start blaming them.

When you read a novel, you know what to expect because you've been reading novels for a long time.

You are told that you have to eliminate un-useful sentences, but as a writer you know how important details are.

You can say that literature is about topics like love, death, and all that, but I think there is only one topic that applies to all literature and that is belonging.

É uma história de amor, nada muito especial: duas pessoas constroem, com vontade e inocência, um mundo paralelo que, naturalmente, bem rápido desmorona. É a história de um amor medíocre, juvenil, na qual reconhece sua classe: apartamentos exíguos, meias-verdades, frases de amor automáticas, covardias, fanatismos, ilusões perdidas e depois recuperadas - as bruscas mudanças de destino dos que sobem e descem e não partem nem ficam. Palavras velozes, que antecipam uma revelação que não chega.

I must say that my father is innocent. I should say it. I have to say it. I’m obliged to say it. My father will kill me if I don’t say he is innocent. The children of murderers cannot kill the father.

I was going to be a memory when I grew up.

Mi padre era un computador, mi madre era una máquina de escribir. Yo era un cuaderno vacío y ahora soy un libro.

Se ama para dejar de amar y se deja de amar para empezar a amar a otros, o para quedarse solos, por un rato o para siempre. Ése es el dogma. El único dogma.

Sem dúvida seria muito melhor rolar pelo chão de tanto rir, ou construir um eloquente ríctus de desprezo. Seria preferível fechar o livro, fechar os livros, e enfrentar, sem mais, não a vida, que é muito grande, mas a frágil armadura do presente.

To read is to cover one's face. And to write is to show it.