“Today, going to schools is essential, since, just as doctors have a duty to protect life, writers must spread literature, because literature is in itself, along with art in general, the greatest form of freedom we still have.”

“For she was of that generation who, having found nothing in religion, had formed themselves through literature.”

“To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarates, the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning in into slumber. The other arts make no such retreat— some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself.
This isn't the case with literature. Literature simulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse.”

“Our National life is full of diversities. We have here a variety of languages, of faiths, of communities, of modes of living, and schools and styles of literature and art. This diversity reflects the abundance of our national life, and need to be preserved and promoted.”

“In literature you don't just read one poem or novel after another, but enter into a complete world of which every work of literature forms part. This affects the writer as much as it does the reader.”

“Freedom of expression is a very essential condition for me to make any art. Also, it is an essential value for my life. I have to protect this right and also to fight for the possibility.”

“We must never lose sight of the deep and indestructible connections between translation/literature and life. If what we write is to have a chance of living on the page, then we must also live, we must observe life, we must experience and learn to transmute that experience. Translators no less than creative writers.”

“The sole substitute for an experience we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.”

“Literature got me into this mess and literature is going to have to get me out of it.”

“A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.”