European Novelists Quotes

In fact I don't think of literature, or music, or any art form as having a nationality. Where you're born is simply an accident of fate. I don't see why I shouldn't be more interested in say, Dickens, than in an author from Barcelona simply because I wasn't born in the UK. I do not have an ethno-centric view of things, much less of literature. Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Anthony Powell was the most European of 20th-century British novelists. ~ Tariq Ali

I've never seen anything like it since. Some of the Canada Cups came close, but by then a lot of European players came and played in our league so we were more familiar with them. ~ Marcel Dionne

Both the American and the European approaches to foreign policy were the products of their own unique circumstances. Americans inhabited a nearly empty continent shielded from predatory powers by two vast oceans and with weak countries as neighbors. Since America confronted no power in need of being balanced, it could hardly have occupied itself with the challenges of equilibrium even if its leaders had been seized by the bizarre notion of replicating European conditions amidst a people who had turned their backs on Europe. ~ Henry Kissinger

The common wisdom is that only about 1 percent of a novelist's research ends up in his or her book. In my experience, it's even less - closer to a tenth of a percent. ~ Gayle Lynds

The missionaries find it opportune to remind the masses that long before the advent of European colonialism the great African empires were disrupted by the Arab invasion. There is no hesitation in saying that it was the Arab occupation which paved the way for European colonialism; Arab imperialism commonly spoken of, and the cultural imperialism of Islam is condemned. ~ Frantz Fanon

A descendent of Basque ranchers, the mayor came from the small circle of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century European immigrants who had been his father's oldest customers and friends. Perhaps Malburg told Jim the story of how Vernon got its start in 1905, when John Baptiste Leonis, a French Basque hog rancher, persuaded the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads to extend tracks to his city to attract new factories, their preferred freight-hauling customers. ~ Victor Valle

Haw! Haw! Inconceivable stupidity is just what you're going to get! (Brigadier-General Henry Wilson, on being challenged in 1910 about the likelihood of a European war) ~ Max Hastings

At college, I was told there were four great women novelists in the 19th century – Jane Austen, George Eliot, Charlotte and Emily Brontë. Not one of them led an enviable life – all of them had to sacrifice ludicrously in order to be writers. I wasn't prepared to do that.

You could become ill so that you could retreat to the bedroom, avoid your domestic responsibilities and write like Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti. You had to forget about writing if you weren't prepared to sacrifice any other things you might want from life, like kids or lovers. It's not like that now. ~ Jeanette Winterson

A latecomer on the scene, Germany had only been able to pick up the scraps and crumbs left over by European colonial powers that had enjoyed a head start on them. ~ Richard J. Evans

Democracy can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized. But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralization of power. ~ Aldous Huxley

[Referring to passage by Alice Munro] Finally, the passage contradicts a form of bad advice often given young writers
namely, that the job of the author is to show, not tell. Needless to say, many great novelists combine "dramatic" showing with long sections of the flat-out authorial narration that is, I guess, what is meant by telling. And the warning against telling leads to a confusion that causes novice writers to think that everything should be acted out
don't tell us a character is happy, show us how she screams "yay" and jumps up and down for joy
when in fact the responsibility of showing should be assumed by the energetic and specific use of language. ~ Francine Prose

The same European governments that hesitated to confront terrorists were more than prepared to oppose us. ~ Richard Perle

The biggest ambition in my career is still to win the European Cup. I want to have a picture of that to look at later; I want to have that medal. You can have a contract that is better than your friends, but no player looks back and says: 'I won more money.' ~ Fernando Torres

European peace movement felt that the deployment of these missiles on European soil, on German soil would be a very great danger towards the Soviet Union in that those missiles could reach the Soviet Union, make it vulnerable within five to six minutes, that it could surgical strikes, strikes into the military infrastructure and that a strike into the military infrastructure could cause in fact World War III, an atomic world war and that this could also be used for first strike, for surgical search, first strike into the Soviet Union. ~ Petra Kelly

I said, yet again, for Germany, Europe is not only indispensable, it is part and parcel of our identity. We've always said German unity, European unity and integration, that's two parts of one and the same coin. But we want, obviously, to boost our competitiveness. ~ Angela Merkel

What I'd do is not have USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy working with U.S. taxpayers' money to knock off an elected government in Ukraine, which is what they did. I wouldn't try to force the people of Ukraine into a deal with NATO against their interest or into a deal with the European Union, which is against their economic interest. ~ Dennis Kucinich

I love European films in general. If I were to go to the movie store or something, that's what I like to see. ~ Emmanuelle Chriqui

Bulgaria, I reflected as I walked back to the hotel, isn't a country; it's a near-death experience. ~ Bill Bryson

So, the international community are all the countries that are important: the United States definitely everywhere; the European Union because it is very important, and also, they do show a great deal of international responsibility; and then the local players. ~ Lakhdar Brahimi

You alone in Europe are not ancient oh Christianity
The most modern European is you Pope Pius X
And you whom the windows observe shame keeps you
From entering a church and confessing this morning
You read the prospectuses the catalogues the billboards that sing aloud
That's the poetry this morning and for the prose there are the newspapers
There are the 25 centime serials full of murder mysteries
Portraits of great men and a thousand different headlines
("Zone") ~ Guillaume Apollinaire

Europe needs to develop a sense of collective history - we need to write books from a European perspective, to teach it in schools as well. ~ Bernard-Henri Levy

The team which I led to the 1992 European Championship Finals is the only one in the history of the entire competition to have won every single one of its qualifying matches. ~ Michel Patini

It's been 18 months since I won on The European Tour and to win the flagship event, I could not have asked for any more. ~ Rory McIlroy

If Ireland is to become a new Ireland she must first become European. ~ James Joyce

It is quite unfathomable why the EU leadership fails to anticipate these potentially catastrophic possibilities, and fails to respond to popular concerns with more moderate immigration policies. One possible explanation for these perverse policies that has been put forward by highly regarded scholars, such as Samuel Huntington, is that the current leadership of the EU is composed of left-wing authoritarians who are enemies of the Western liberal tradition. According to Huntington, "Multiculturalism is in its essence anti-European... "and opposes its civilization. The official repression of dissent and pursuance of unpopular policies by undemocratic means suggests that such ideologues wish to turn the EU into a centrally controlled empire similar to the Soviet Union. If that is the case, then their current policies make a good deal of sense, in that they flood the continent with people who have lived under autocratic regimes and never lived in democratic republics. Such people may well be willing to tolerate repressive regimes provided they can maintain a moderate standard of living and their own traditional religious practices. As Hunnngton points out, imperial regimes often promote ethnic conflict among their minority citizens to strengthen the power of the central authority, with the not unrealistic claim that a powerful central authority is essential to maintain civil order. But if that is the case, then Europe will be transformed into an authoritarian and illiberal multie ~ Byron M. Roth

The novelist ... must live in paranoia and seek to be one with the world; he must be terrified of experience and hungry for it; he must think himself nothing and believe he is superior to all. ~ Norman Mailer

Ideas and statutes that live only in disembodied intellect are fragile, easily manipulated by both sides in a debate. This is as true of European "sustainability" regulations as it is for Amazonian súmac káusai removed from its forest home. Knowledge gained through extended bodily relationship with the forest, including the forest's human communities, is more robust.
... There is truth that cannot be accessed through intellect alone, especially intellect that is not aware of local ecological variations. ~ David George Haskell

I'm European, I wake up in heels. ~ Julia Restoin Roitfeld

FACT: The Priory of Sion - a European secret society founded in 1099 - is a real organization. In 1975 Paris's Bibliothque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo da Vinci. ~ Dan Brown

What people still do not like to admit is that there were two crimes in the form of one. Just as the destruction of Jewry was the necessary condition for the rise and expansion of Nazism, so the ethnic cleansing of Germans was a precondition for the Stalinization of Poland. I first noticed this point when reading an essay by the late Ernest Gellner, who at the end of the war had warned Eastern Europeans that collective punishment of Germans would put them under Stalin's tutelage indefinitely. They would always feel the guilty need for an ally against potential German revenge. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Racism is apparently a card to be played; much like the joker, it's a
very versatile card that can be used in any situation that might require
it. Only non-white people ever play this card to excuse their own
personal failings - even those of us that are materially successful.
Humans racialised as white cannot play the race card - just like they
cannot be terrorists - so European national empires colonising almost
the entire globe and enacting centuries of unapologetically and openly
racist legislation and practices, churning out an impressively large body
of proudly racist justificatory literature and cinema and much else has
had no impact on shaping human history, it has really just been black
and brown people playing cards. ~ Akala