“I want every sentence of this book to be a climax.”
– Clarice Lispector, A Breath of Life
[See Bruno Schulz.]
Category Archives: Quotes
Quotes
“Nothing is more fantastic, ultimately, than precision.”
– Alain Robbe-Grillet, “From Realism to Reality,” For a New Novel
Two Opposing Ideas
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Crack-Up”
The Book That Destroys Itself
Edmond Jabès, “Interview with Edmond Jabès”, Montemora #6 (1979) [reprinted in Susan Handelman’s The Sin of the Book]
Mallarmé wanted to put all knowledge into a book…. But in my opinion this book would be very ephemeral, since knowledge in itself is ephemeral. The book that would have a chance to survive, I think, is the book that destroys itself, that destroys itself in favour of another book that will prolong it. [via]
All Pages Aflame
“For ordinary books are like meteors. Each of them has only one moment, a moment when it soars screaming like the phoenix, all its pages aflame. For that single moment we love them ever after, although they soon turn to ashes. With bitter resignation we sometimes wander late at night through the extinct pages that tell their stone dead messages like wooden rosary beads.”
– Bruno Schulz, The Book of Letters [via]
[See Clarice Lispector.]
Exfoliating an Idea
“I am not constructing a story, but exfoliating an idea that’s usually caught in a metaphor. I listen for its squeak. What I have written must tell me what to write next. If it does not, it must be rewritten until it does. That way I rewrite my beginning until the book is done.”
– William Gass, “William H. Gass: How I Write,” by Noah Charney , The Daily Beast 13 May 2013
Quotes
“I can’t think of anything to write, I’m just walking around here between the lines, underneath the light of your eyes, in the breath of your mouth…”
– Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena
Quotes
“I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.”
– William Gass, “The Art of Fiction 65,” interview by Thomas LeClair, The Paris Review 70 Summer 1977
Quotes
“By the mouth for the ear: that’s the way I’d like to write.”
– William Gass, “The Art of Fiction 65,” interview by Thomas LeClair, The Paris Review 70 Summer 1977
Quotes
“What, in the end, makes advertisements so superior to criticism? Not what the moving red neon sign says — but the fiery pool reflecting it in the asphalt.”
– Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street
ANDREW GALLIX 