Alain Robbe-Grillet Quotes & Sayings

There is a famous Russian cartoon in which a hippopotamus, in the bush, points out a zebra to another hippopotamus: 'You see,' he says, 'now that's formalism. — Alain Robbe-Grillet

I felt condemned to obscurity and to celibacy. But when one is driven by passion, one can live on almost nothing, and I was driven by passion for writing. One does not starve in modern, Western societies, and one can do without such amenities as the telephone, a car, entertainment. — Alain Robbe-Grillet

What do young girls dream of? Of the knife and of blood. — Alain Robbe-Grillet

The writer must proudly consent to bear his own date, knowing that there are no masterpieces in eternity, but only works in history, and that they survive only to the degree that they have left the past behind them and heralded the future. — Alain Robbe-Grillet

To tell the truth, girls are no longer the way they used to be. They play gangsters, nowadays, just like boys. They organize rackets. They plan holdups and practice karate. They will rape defenseless adolescents. They wear pants ... Life has become impossible. — Alain Robbe-Grillet

The reader [as well as the main character] does not view the work from outside. He too is in the labyrinth. — Alain Robbe-Grillet

Memory belongs to the imagination. — Alain Robbe-Grillet

Memory belongs to the imagination. Human memory is not like a computer which records things; it is part of the imaginative process, on the same terms as invention. — Alain Robbe-Grillet

The art of the novel, however, has fallen into such a state of stagnation - a lassitude acknowledged and discussed by the whole of critical opinion - that it is hard to imagine such an art can survive for long without some radical change. To many, the solution seems simple enough: such a change being impossible, the art of the novel is dying. — Alain Robbe-Grillet

The world is neither meaningful, nor absurd. it quite simply is, and that, in any case, is what is so remarkable about it. — Alain Robbe-Grillet

I am certain that a novelist is someone who attributes a different reality-value to the characters and events of his story than to those of 'real' life. A novelist is someone who confuses his own life with that of his characters. — Alain Robbe-Grillet

The true writer has nothing to say. What counts is the way he says it. — Alain Robbe-Grillet