Antonio Tabucchi Quotes
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As a writer, I've always been interested in others.
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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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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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I was born in the Second World War during the Nazi invasion of my country.
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Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.
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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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There are some fundamental values it's impossible to be wrong about.
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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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Like a blazing comet, I've traversed infinite nights, interstellar spaces of the imagination, voluptuousness and fear.
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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.
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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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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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It's the job of intellectuals and writers to cast doubt on perfection.
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Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.
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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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It's very useful when politicians have doubts because there are so many choices to be made in the world.
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I prefer insomnia to anaesthesia.
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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 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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We all want to be someone else but without ceasing to be ourselves. I think it's very important to defend this idea in real life too.
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I don't know whether these people are going to find themselves, but as they live their lives they have no choice but to face up to the image others have of them. They're forced to look at themselves in a mirror, and they often manage to glimpse something of themselves.
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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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When you have a foreign invasion - in this case by the Indonesian army - writers, intellectuals, newspapers and magazines are the first targets of repression.