Tabucchi A Tavola Quotes

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. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

It's a theory advanced by two French philosophers who are also psychologists, they hold that we do not have a single soul but a confederation of souls guided by a ruling ego, and every now and then this ruling ego changes, so that although we establish a norm it isn't a stable norm, but a variable one. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

When you have a foreign invasion - in this case by the Indonesian army - writers, intellectuals, newspapers and magazines are the first targets of repression. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

As a writer, I've always been interested in others. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

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. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

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. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

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. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

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

Fifty years after half a million gypsies were exterminated in the Second World War - thousands of them in Auschwitz - we're again preparing the mass killing of this minority. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

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. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

My job is to look at what politics is doing, not be a politician myself. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

I claim the right to take a stand once in a while. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

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

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

I live quietly at home among my family and friends. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

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. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

Personally I don't trust literature that soothes people's consciences. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

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

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. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

I prefer insomnia to anaesthesia. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

Everything that I have known
You'll write to me to remind
Me of, and likewise I shall do
The whole past I'll recount to you ~ Friedrich Holderlin

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

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

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. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

The salt of any interesting civilization is mixture. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

It's the job of intellectuals and writers to cast doubt on perfection. ~ Antonio Tabucchi

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

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