Matas Quotes & Sayings

Back at the Chateau Windsor there was a rat-like scratching at the door of my room. Vinod, the youngest servant, came in with a soda water. He placed it next to the bag of toffees. Then he watched me read. I was used to being observed reading. Sometimes the room would fill like a railway station at rush hour and I would be expected to cure widespread boredom. — Tahir Shah

We are alive. We are human, with good and bad in us. That's all we know for sure. We can't create a new species or a new world. That's been done. Now we have to live within those boundaries . What are our choices? We can despair and curse, and change nothing. We can choose evil like our enemies have done and create a world based on hate. Or we can try to make things better. — Carol Matas

I think I have the right to be able to see myself differently from how others see me, to see myself however I want and not to be forced to be this person other people have decided I am. — Enrique Vila-Matas

Tell me the truth. When you were leaving prison after twenty-seven years and walking down that road to freedom, didn't you hate them all over again?" And he said, "Absolutely I did, because they'd imprisoned me for so long. I was abused. I didn't get to see my children grow up. I lost my marriage and the best years of my life. I was angry. And I was afraid, because I had not been free in so long. But as I got closer to the car that would take me away, I realized that when I went through that gate, if I still hated them, they would still have me. I wanted to be free. And so I let it go." In — Nelson Mandela

He believes that if talent is demanded of a literary publisher or a writer, it must also be demanded of a reader. Because we mustn't deceive ourselves: on the journey of reading we often travel through difficult terrains that demand a capacity for intelligent emotion, a desire to understand the other, and to approach a language distinct from the one of our daily tyrannies ... Writers fail readers, but it also happens the other way around and readers fail writers when all they ask of them is confirmation that the world is how they see it. — Enrique Vila-Matas

(S)omehow I've survived again. I don't know how to stop.
- Ruth — Carol Matas

I am wandering inside, wandering through my past, trying to see if there is a place there strong enough to hold me.
- Ruth Mendenberg — Carol Matas

For he had learned from others of their kind that death seemed to bring small comfort from the worrisome sphere of life ... — Neal Barrett Jr.

I long to journey endlessly, always in search of something new. Always alert. — Enrique Vila-Matas

Had I mentioned to someone around 1795 that I planned to write, anyone with any sense would have told me to write for two hours every day, with or without inspiration. Their advice would have enabled me to benefit from the ten years of my life I totally wasted waiting for inspiration. — Enrique Vila-Matas

As for sex. Well, of course I could've had sex. Guys will have sex with a watermelon if they're desperate enough. Lots of girls try to prove their love by having sex. It only proves they're having sex. — Carol Matas

Will you be all right? she asked
How could I be?
Would you be all right, I felt like screaming, if you'd just watched your family taken away, watched your entire town taken away, to be murdered. I'll never be alright. — Carol Matas

I have been to hell and back, and let me tell you, it was wonderful. — Louise Bourgeois

I want someone to pinch me so I can feel something, anything. I'm sick of this numbness, of feeling so alone and outside of everything, but I know it's too dangerous to wake up.
- Ruth Mendenberg — Carol Matas

(B)ut who can start over when memories never leave you?
- Ruth Mendenberg — Carol Matas

I try to create new characters in each book I write. That's what makes writing fun and interesting for me. — Judy Blume

I go in alone, for there is no one for me, but I don't care, I tell myself; I'd expected no one.
- Ruth — Carol Matas

has been done deliberately. In a clear-line comic-book such as the — Matas, Toni

When it grows dark, we always need someone. This thought, the product of anxiety, only comes to me in the evenings, just when I'm about to end my writerly explorations. — Enrique Vila-Matas

I don't like ferocious irony but rather the kind that vacillates between disappointment and hope. Okay? — Enrique Vila-Matas

I am encouraged to see women are being elected in Chile, Argentina, Liberia, Ireland. More is more. — Dee Dee Myers

I conclude where I began, I was elected by the people of Australia to do a job. I was not elected by the factional leaders of Australia, of the Australian Labor Party to do a job - though they may be seeking to do a job on me, that's a separate matter. The challenge therefore is to honour the mandate given to me by the Australian people. — Kevin Rudd

He has always admired writers who each day begin a journey towards the unknown and who nevertheless spend all their time sitting in a room. — Enrique Vila-Matas

Everybody else goes out and plays a show as if it's their album, which is boring. I'd rather sit at home and listen to the album, because I hate to be in a smoke-filled, loud room - that's not enjoyable for me at all ... I always look up to guys who can sit and do dinner music ... they're singing in tune and playing somebody else's music, and I don't think I could do that ... it's the shittiest job in the world. — Dweezil Zappa

(In Austria after VE Day)
Sergeant Mercier ... dressed in a full German officer's uniform, topped off with a monocle for his right eye. Someone got the bright idea to march him over to the company orderly room and turn him in at rifle point to Captain Speirs.
Someone got word to Speirs before Mercier showed up. When troopers brought Mercier up to Speirs's desk, prodding him with bayonets, Speirs did not look up. One of the troopers snapped a salute and declared, "Sir, we have captured this German officer. What should we do with him?"
"Take him out and shoot him," Speirs replied, not looking up.
"Sir," Mercier called out, "sir, please, sir, it's me, Sergeant Mercier."
"Mercier, get out of that silly uniform," Speirs ordered. — Stephen E. Ambrose

The novel is a hybrid genre and a large part of its charm arises from the alluvial nature of its materials. There is nothing that doesn't suit a novelist in action, when he's in the course of writing his novel. — Enrique Vila-Matas

I was full of doubts, of course, not a particularly bad way to be, but I didn't know that. Doubting so much made me suffer, but I could have saved myself the anxiety and simply doubted, without any problem. I was unaware that to doubt is to write. Marguerite Duras would say so in 1995, toward the end of her days: I can say what I like, but I shall never know why people write and how it is people don't write. In life, there comes a time, and I think it is total, that we cannot escape, where we doubt everything: that doubt is writing. — Enrique Vila-Matas

Haven't we all been hurt? Don't you think it takes courage to be happy, to feel, to love? Don't you think it costs us all?
- Rivka — Carol Matas

As I write, I control my anxiety and anguish thanks to the invaluable aid of irony and humor. But every night I am subdued by an anxiety that knows no irony, and I must wait until the next day to rediscover the blend of anguish and humor that characterizes my writing and that generates my style. — Enrique Vila-Matas

After all, what are we, what is any one of us, if not a combination, particular and exact, of what we have done, what we have read, and what we have imagined? — Enrique Vila-Matas

Deep inside me something says don't feel anything, go back to sleep, when you feel, it hurts. When you love, people die.
- Ruth Mendenberg — Carol Matas

It's an honor, indeed I'm glad, to join in giving a warm reception to a book that has given me many delightful moments. — Enrique Vila-Matas

To miniaturize is also to conceal. — Enrique Vila-Matas