Manuel Puig Quotes & Sayings

I only understand realism. — Manuel Puig

I don't think humor is forced upon my universe; it's a part of it. — Manuel Puig

Tardiness in literature can make me nervous. — Manuel Puig

I've always wondered why there isn't a great French novel about the German occupation. The nouveau roman authors weren't interested in telling that sort of thing. — Manuel Puig

Whenever I write, I'm always thinking of the reader. — Manuel Puig

Modern American cinema seems to me superficial. The intention is to understand a certain reality, and the result is nothing but a photographing of that reality. — Manuel Puig

I think cinema is closer to allegories than to reality. It's closer to our dreams. — Manuel Puig

Book reviews have never helped me. Most of them erred in their interpretations and their work has been a waste of time. — Manuel Puig

I haven't been the kind of writer about whom book-length academic studies have been written. — Manuel Puig

I believe realism is nothing but an analysis of reality. Film scripts have a synthetical constitution. — Manuel Puig

The writer needs to react to his or her own internal universe, to his or her own point of view. If he or she doesn't have a personal point of view, it's impossible to be a creator. — Manuel Puig

The essayist has to follow a certain intellectual pattern. The novelist has the advantage of using fantasy, of being subjective. — Manuel Puig

- But you have to reason it out then and convince yourself.
- Yes, but there are reasons of the heart that reason doesn't encompass. — Manuel Puig

One performs a very different act when reading a movie and when reading a novel. Your attention behaves differently. — Manuel Puig

I do believe that reading can help you understand what you're writing and see what others are doing. But sometimes the desire for more information can act as an inhibitor. — Manuel Puig

I began teaching in New York because I needed to stay in the United States and didn't have my immigration papers in order, so working for a university was a way of resolving the issue. — Manuel Puig

In film, you can't go into analytical explorations because the audience will reject that. — Manuel Puig

Ironically, Latin American countries, in their instability, give writers and intellectuals the hope that they are needed. — Manuel Puig

Contrary to what Kafka does, I always like to refer all of my fictions to the level of reality, He, on the other hand, leaves them at an imaginary level. — Manuel Puig

Hitchcock makes it very clear to us. There's an objective and a subjective camera, like there's a third- and a first-person narrator in literature. — Manuel Puig

What's better, a poetic intuition or an intellectual work? I think they complement each other. — Manuel Puig

As a rule, one should never place form over content. — Manuel Puig

I believe in characters as vehicles of exposition. Their voices are full of hidden clues, and I like to listen to them. — Manuel Puig

I started writing movie scripts. They excited me a lot, but I didn't like them when they were finished because they were simple copies of the films I saw in childhood. — Manuel Puig

We should try to understand our innermost needs. We shouldn't use irony to reduce their power. — Manuel Puig

I am very interested in what has been called bad taste. I believe the fear of displaying a soi-disant bad taste stops us from venturing into special cultural zones. — Manuel Puig

I locate that special problem in a character and then try to understand it. That's the genesis of all my work. — Manuel Puig

The translator's task is to create, in his or her own language, the same tensions appearing in the original. That's hard! — Manuel Puig

Teaching is a good distraction, and I am in contact with young people, which is very gratifying. — Manuel Puig

I would very much like to become a best-selling author. — Manuel Puig

And the good thing about feeling happy, you know, Valentin? ... It's that you think it's forever, that one's never ever going to feel unhappy again. — Manuel Puig

I had stories that needed more space than the hour and a half or two hours a movie gives you. — Manuel Puig

My greatest aspiration was always to live in the tropics. — Manuel Puig

I can work in films as long as the story doesn't have a realistic nature. If I'm working with an allegory, a fantasy, it can be developed in synthetic terms. — Manuel Puig

I believe that people who don't achieve anything in life are isolated and resent those that are successful. — Manuel Puig

I didn't choose literature. Literature chose me. There was no decision on my side. — Manuel Puig

Writers are not meant for action. — Manuel Puig

I have written every one of my novels to convince somebody of something. — Manuel Puig

Being a man (male "macho") does not give you right to anything. — Manuel Puig

If it's great stuff, the people who consume it are nourished. It's a positive force. — Manuel Puig

What better model of a synthesis than a nocturnal dream? Dreams simplify, don't they? — Manuel Puig

I felt the need to tell stories to understand myself. — Manuel Puig

Most of the movies I saw growing up were viewed as totally disposable, fine for quick consumption, but they have survived 50 years and are still growing. — Manuel Puig

- And what's so bad about being soft like a woman? Why is it men or whoever, some poor bastard, some queen, can't be sensitive too, if he's got a mind to?
...
- But if men acted like women there wouldn't be anymore torturers. — Manuel Puig

I write for somebody who has my own limitations. My reader has a certain difficulty with concentrating, which in my case comes from being a film viewer. — Manuel Puig

If a spectator with a philosophical mind, somebody accustomed to reading books, gets the same kind of information in a movie, he might not fully understand it. — Manuel Puig

Your reality, isn't restricted by this cell we live in. If you read something, if you study something, you transcend any cell you're inside of — Manuel Puig

All of my problems are rather complicated - I need an entire novel to deal with them, not a short story or a movie. It's like a personal therapy. — Manuel Puig

I'm not a best-seller, but through translations, I've accumulated some money. — Manuel Puig

I am only interested in bad taste if I can enjoy a gruesome tango or watch a movie that makes me cry. — Manuel Puig

I write novels because there is something I don't understand in reality. — Manuel Puig

I allow my intuition to lead my path. — Manuel Puig

My stories are very somber, so I think I need the comic ingredient. Besides, life has so much humor. — Manuel Puig

I like the beauty of Faulkner's poetry. But I don't like his themes, not at all. — Manuel Puig

My pleasure was to copy, not to create. — Manuel Puig

In a country like France, so ancient, their history is full of outstanding people, so they carry a heavy weight on their back. Who could write in French after Proust or Flaubert? — Manuel Puig

It doesn't matter that the way of life shown by Hollywood was phony. It helped you hope. — Manuel Puig

My only fantasy about writing was that in my old days, after directing many masterpieces, I would write my memoirs. — Manuel Puig

If the novelist shares his or her problems with the characters, he or she is able to study his personal unconscious. — Manuel Puig

For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free. — Manuel Puig

I've never seen a worse situation than that of young writers in the United States. The publishing business in North America is so commercialized. — Manuel Puig

I don't want to name names, but the least I can say about rock and roll is that I'm suspicious. — Manuel Puig

It's my own personal unconscious that ultimately creates the novel's aesthetic facade. — Manuel Puig

The nicest thing about feeling happy is that you think you'll never be unhappy again.
— Manuel Puig

I don't have traceable literary models because I haven't had great literary influences in my life. — Manuel Puig

It's essential not to have an ideology, not to be a member of a political party. While the writer can have certain political views, he has to be careful not to have his hands tied. — Manuel Puig

Kafka truly illustrates the way the environment oppresses the individual. He shows how the unconscious controls our lives. — Manuel Puig

I'm not terribly happy about rock and roll. Certain rock music is uninspiring, numbing; it makes you feel like an idiot. — Manuel Puig