“Life is a very bad novelist. It is chaotic and ludicrous.”
"Javier Marías, The Art of Fiction No. 190" https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5680/javier-marias-the-art-of-fiction-no-190-javier-marias, interview with Sarah Fay, The Paris Review 179 (Winter 2006)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Javier Marías25
Spanish writer 1951Related quotes
“Life is chaotic, dangerous, and surprising. Buildings should reflect that.”
Frank Gehry (1929) Canadian-American (b.1929)
Source: Jason K. Miller, Susan Lauzau (2002) Frank Gehry. p. 6.
“The curse of an interesting life: there are either very good times or very bad times.”
Alethea Kontis (1976) American writer
Source: Enchanted
“Nobody, as long as he moves among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.”
C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology
“Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life.”
Charlotte Brontë book The Professor
Source: The Professor (1857), Ch. XIX
Steve Maraboli (1975)
Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 94
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
The Natural History of Intellect (1893)
Context: Characters and talents are complemental and suppletory. The world stands by balanced antagonisms. The more the peculiarities are pressed the better the result. The air would rot without lightning; and without the violence of direction that men have, without bigots, without men of fixed idea, no excitement, no efficiency.
The novelist should not make any character act absurdly, but only absurdly as seen by others. For it is so in life. Nonsense will not keep its unreason if you come into the humorist's point of view, but unhappily we find it is fast becoming sense, and we must flee again into the distance if we would laugh.