Antonio Tabucchi Quotes
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History is a big word... History is not the sort of animal you can domesticate.
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I don't go for people who lead full and satisfying lives.
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My books are about losers, about people who've lost their way and are engaged in a search.
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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.
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I was born in the Second World War during the Nazi invasion of my country.
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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.
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My job is to look at what politics is doing, not be a politician myself.
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No, I'm happy to go on living the life I've chosen. I'm a university teacher and I like my job.
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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.
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I've always been drawn to tormented people full of contradictions.
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Rather than regret for what I have written, I feel regret for what I shall never be able to read.
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It's the job of intellectuals and writers to cast doubt on perfection.
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Literature is my life of course, but from an ontological point of view. From an existential point of view, I like being a teacher.
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People with lots of doubts sometimes find life more oppressive and exhausting than others, but they're more energetic - they aren't robots.
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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.
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There are some fundamental values it's impossible to be wrong about.
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Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.
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As a writer, I've always been interested in others.
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I don't want to promote my own image either. I don't like going on television or mixing in literary circles.
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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.
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But democracy isn't a state of perfection. It has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.
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Philosophy appears to concern itself only with the truth, but perhaps expresses only fantasies, while literature appears to concern itself only with fantasies, but perhaps it expresses the truth.
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The salt of any interesting civilization is mixture.
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I live quietly at home among my family and friends.
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I claim the right to take a stand once in a while.
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The most important basis of any novel is wanting to be someone else, and this means creating a character.
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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.
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personally I don't trust literature that soothes people's consciences.
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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.
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Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.
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