“When I read, it is not acted literature; but what I write is written acting.”
Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist
Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)
“I learned to write reading North American literature, I love your literature, but I have this feeling that if a country only reads its own literature, it will run out of oxygen.”
On her encouraging that Americans read literature beyond their country in “Samanta Schweblin on Revealing Darkness Through Fiction” https://lithub.com/samanta-schweblin-on-revealing-darkness-through-fiction/ in LitHub (2017 Jan 12)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "I learned to write reading North American literature, I love your literature, but I have this feeling that if a country…" by Samanta Schweblin?
Samanta Schweblin4
Argentine writer 1978Related quotes
“The best way to know the soul of another country is to read its literature.”
Amos Oz (1939–2018) Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual
Francisco Aragón (1968) poet
On his advice to Latino poets in “Interview with Francisco Aragón: Latino Poetry From All Its Perspectives” https://www.sampsoniaway.org/literary-voices/2010/09/16/interview-with-francisco-aragon-latino-poetry-from-all-its-perspectives/ in Sampsonia Way (2010 Sept 16)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer
Open letter to the Fourth Soviet Writers’ Congress (16 May 1967) “The Struggle Intensifies,” Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record, ed. Leopold Labedz (1970).
“Read, learn, work it up, go to the literature.
Information is control.”
Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking
Source: The Year of Magical Thinking
Karl Shapiro (1913–2000) Poet, essayist
Paris Review interview (1986)
Context: Whitman to me is the most fascinating of American poets. Whitman started to write the great poetry from scratch after he had written all that junk for newspapers, the sentimental lyrical poems. All of a sudden he wrote Leaves of Grass. When I was teaching at the University of Nebraska, my friend James Miller was chairman of the English Department. He wrote the first book attempting to make a parallel between the structure of Leaves of Grass and the steps of the mystical experience as in St. John of the Cross. I was completely bowled over by this, not having been able to explain how Whitman came to write “Song of Myself,” which is unlike anything not only in American literature, but unique in all the world. The parallels to it are mystical literature. Miller tried to show that there was actual evidence for this kind of experience, which evidently happens at a particular moment in someone’s life. … When I saw the negative reaction to Whitman with the great ruling critics of the time, I couldn’t believe it. Eliot never really gave up hammering away on Whitman, neither did Pound. Although Pound makes little concessions. Whitman, you know, didn’t have any influence in this country until Allen Ginsberg came along.
Gao Xingjian (1940) Chinese novelist and playwright
Interview by Jean-Luc Douin http://web.archive.org/web/20130421061108/http://my.opera.com/PRC/blog/?startidx=560
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873) English novelist, poet, playwright, and politician
Caxtoniana: Hints on Mental Culture (1862)