Reinaldo Arenas Quotes (5 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Reinaldo Arenas: 5 quotes 0 likes

Famous Reinaldo Arenas Quotes

“Mine is not an obedient writing. I think that literature as any art has to be irreverent.”

Reinaldo Arenas

“I have always considered it despicable to grovel for your life as if life were a favor. If you cannot live the way you want, there is no point in living”

Reinaldo Arenas

“In exile one is nothing but a ghost ... I ceased to exist when I went into exile.”

Reinaldo Arenas

Source: From Arenas’ work Before Night Falls (as quoted in “On Exile and the Longing for Home: Cuban Writer Reinaldo Arenas” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/on-exile-and-the-longing-_b_4451017; 2014 Feb 18)

“The writer has a fundamental responsibility to write well or to write the best he can, because if he doesn’t he’s not a writer. And when a writer writes, he’s always referring to a social and historical context…”

Reinaldo Arenas

Source: On a writer’s responsibility in “The Literature of Uprootedness: An Interview with Reinaldo Arenas” https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-literature-of-uprootedness-an-interview-with-reinaldo-arenas in The New Yorker (2013 Dec 5)

“I’ve always been very interested in the short story. Compared to the often exhausting world of the novel, the short story offers a quicker reward, and there’s something appealing about its greater spontaneity…”

Reinaldo Arenas

Source: On his preference for short stories over novels in “The Literature of Uprootedness: An Interview with Reinaldo Arenas” https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-literature-of-uprootedness-an-interview-with-reinaldo-arenas in The New Yorker (2013 Dec 5)