“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)
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Javier Marías 25
Spanish writer 1951Related quotes
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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.
