Antonio Tabucchi Quotes & Sayings

History is a big word ... History is not the sort of animal you can domesticate. — Antonio Tabucchi

My books are about losers, about people who've lost their way and are engaged in a search. — Antonio Tabucchi

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

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. — Antonio Tabucchi

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

I don't want to promote my own image either. I don't like going on television or mixing in literary circles. — Antonio Tabucchi

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

I've come to realize one thing, that stories are always bigger than we are, they happen to us and we are their protagonists without realizing it, but in the stories we live, we aren't the true protagonists, the true protagonist is the story itself. — 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

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. — Antonio Tabucchi

No, I'm happy to go on living the life I've chosen. I'm a university teacher and I like my job. — Antonio Tabucchi

It's very useful when politicians have doubts because there are so many choices to be made in the world. — Antonio Tabucchi

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

Doubts are like stains on a shirt. I like shirts with stains, because when I'm given a shirt that's too clean, one that's completely white, I immediately start having doubts. — Antonio Tabucchi

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

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

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

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

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

I don't go for people who lead full and satisfying lives. — 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

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. — 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

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

This story, which takes place one a Sunday in July in a hot, deserted Lisbon, is the Requiem that the character I refer to as "I" was called on to perform in this book. Were someone to ask me why I wrote this story in Portuguese, I would answer simply that a story like this could only be written in Portuguese; it's as simple as that. But there is something else that needs explaining. Strictly speaking, a Requiem should be written in Latin, at least that's what tradition prescribes. Unfortunately, I don't think I'd be up to it in Latin. I realised though that I couldn't write a Requiem in my own language and I that I required a different language, one that was for me A PLACE OF AFFECTION AND REFLECTION. — 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

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

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

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

Literature is my life of course, but from an ontological point of view. From an existential point of view, I like being a teacher. — 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

Rather than regret for what I have written, I feel regret for what I shall never be able to read. — Antonio Tabucchi

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

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

I prefer insomnia to anaesthesia. — Antonio Tabucchi

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. — 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

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