The most solid advice, though, for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell, and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
quotations
from Conversations in Sicily by Elio Vittorini
Still smoking I went outside. Cra, cra, cra, shouted the ravens flying through the ashen sky. I went down into the street, went along the street of that Sicily which was no longer a journey, but motionless, and I smoked and cried.
“Ah! Ah! He’s crying! Why is he crying?” shouted the crows among themselves, following behind me.
I continued my walk without answering, and an old black woman followed behind me too. “Why are you crying?” she asked.
I didn’t respond, and I went on, smoking, crying; and a tough guy who was waiting on the piazza with his hands in his pockets asked me too: “Why are you crying?”
He too followed behind me, and still crying, I passed in front of a church. The priest saw us, me and those following me, and asked the old woman, the tough guy, the crows: “Why is this man crying?”
He joined us, and some street urchins saw us and exclaimed:
“Look! He’s smoking and crying!””
They also said: “He’s crying because of the smoke!” And they followed behind me with the others, bringing their game along too.
In the same way a barber followed behind me and a carpenter, a man in rags, a girl with her head wrapped in a scarf, a second man in rags. They saw me and they asked: “Why are you crying?” Or they asked those who were already following me: “Why is he crying?” And they all became my followers: a cart driver, a dog, men of Sicily, women of Sicily, and finally a Chinaman. “Why are you crying?” they asked.
But I had no response to give them. I wasn’t crying for any reason. Deep down I wasn’t even crying; I was remembering; and in the eyes of others, my remembering looked like crying.
translated by Alane Salierno Mason
from Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Marco Polo describes a bridge, stone by stone.
“But which is the stone that supports the bridge?” Kublai Khan asks.
“The bridge is not supported by one stone or another,” Marco answers, “but by
the line of the arch that they form.”
Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting. Then he adds, “Why do you speak to
me of stones? It is only the arch that matters to me.”
Polo answers: “Without stones there is no arch.”
from Night Train To Lisbon by Pascal Mercier
The real director of our life is accident–a director full of cruelty, compassion, and bewitching charm.
from Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
“My head is like some ridiculous barn packed full of stuff I want to write about,” Sumire said. “Images, scenes, snatches of words. . . in my mind they’re all glowing, all alive. Write! they shout at me. A great story is about to be born–I can feel it. It’ll transport me to some brand-new place. Problem is, once I sit at my desk and put all these down on paper, I realize something vital is missing. It doesn’t crystallize–no crystals, just pebbles. And I’m not transported anywhere.”
With a frown, Sumire picked up her two-hundred-and-fiftieth stone and tossed it into the pond.
“Maybe I’m lacking something. Something you absolutely must have to be a writer.”
A deep silence ensued. It seemed she was seeking my run-of-the-mill opinion.
After a while I started to speak. “A long time ago in China there were cities with high walls surrounding them, with huge, magnificent gates. The gates weren’t just doors for letting people in or out but had greater significance. People believed the city’s soul resided in the gates. Or at least that it should reside there. It’s like in Europe in the Middle Ages when people felt a city’s heart lay in its cathedral and central square. Which is why even today in China there are lots of wonderful gates still standing. Do you know how the Chinese built these gates?”
“I have no idea,” Sumire answered.
“People would take carts out to old battlefields and gather the bleached bones that were buried there or that lay scattered about. China’s a pretty ancient country–lots of old battlegrounds–so they never had to search far. At the entrance to the city they’d construct a huge gate and seal the bones inside. They hoped that by commemorating them this way the dead soldiers would continue to guard their town. There’s more. When the gate was finished they’d bring several dogs over to it, slit their throats, and sprinkle their blood on the gate. Only by mixing the fresh blood with the dried out bones would the ancient souls of the dead magically revive. At least that was the idea.”
Sumire waited silently for me to go on.
“Writing novels is much the same. You gather up bones and make your gate, but no matter how wonderful the gate might be, that alone doesn’t make it a living, breathing novel. A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.”
“So what you’re saying is that I go out on my own and find my own dog.”
I nodded.
“And shed fresh blood?”
Sumire bit her lip and thought about this. She tossed another hapless stone into the pond. “I really don’t want to kill an animal if I can help it.”
“It’s a metaphor,” I said. “You don’t actually have to kill anything.”
translated by Philip Gabriel
from The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Dreaming is not merely an act of communication (or coded communication, if you like); it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself. Our dreams prove that to imagine–to dream about things that have not happened–is among mankind’s deepest needs.
from Southern Seas by Manuel Vazquez Montalban
He was ushered in by a secretary who had the air of an ex-convent girl about to marry her fiance after a twelve-year courtship.
from the film Robin & The Seven Hoods
“When your opponent is holding all the aces,
there’s just one thing to do:
kick over the table.”
Advice from Gautama Buddha
Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant with the weak and wrong. Sometime in your life, you will be all of these.
from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.
Leonard Durso 