Antonio Tabucchi Quotes

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

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.

I prefer insomnia to anaesthesia.

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.

I live quietly at home among my family and friends.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.

The salt of any interesting civilization is mixture.

personally I don't trust literature that soothes people's consciences.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

A l'intérieur de ce corps vivait l'âme d'une intellectuelle et poète dont personne n'avait le soupçon. Within this body lived the soul of an intellectual and poet, which nobody had suspected.

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