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“Frustration and desperation are on the same floor as naivety.”

— José Baroja

Source: Radiorama de Occidente. 1480 AM. Guadalajara, Mexico.

Last update Jan. 8, 2026. History

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José Baroja 169

Chilean author and editor 1983

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist

"Partisan Review 'Art Chronicle': 1952" (1952), p. 146
1960s, Art and Culture: Critical Essays, (1961)

“What makes a poet is, surely, the love of these things, a desperate search for the tiny ray of sunshine which used to flicker on the floor of a child’s bedroom.”

Francois Mauriac book Questions of Precedence

Ce qui fait le poète, n'est-ce pas l'amour, la recherche désespérée du moindre rayon de soleil d'autrefois jouant sur le parquet d'une chambre d'enfant?
Préséances (1921), cited from Oeuvres romanesques, vol.1 (Paris: Flammarion, 1965) p. 301; Gerard Hopkins (trans.) Questions of Precedence (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1958) p. 46.

“What makes a poet is, surely, the love of these things, a desperate search for the tiny ray of sunshine which used to flicker on the floor of a child’s bedroom.”

Francois Mauriac (1885–1970) French author

“Such hopes now seemed ludicrous in their naivety, like trying to stop a bulldozer with a feather.”

Alastair Reynolds book Pushing Ice

Source: Pushing Ice (2005), Chapter 13 (p. 216)

“Every novel is like this, desperation, a frustrated attempt to save something of the past. Except that it still has not been established whether it is the novel that prevents man from forgetting himself or the impossibility of forgetfulness that makes him write novels.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Todo o romance é isso, desespero, intento frustrado de que o passado não seja coisa definitivamente perdida. Só não se acabou ainda de averiguar se é o romance que impede o homem de esquecer-se ou se é a impossibilidade do esquecimento que o leva a escrever romances.
Source: The History of the Siege of Lisbon (1989), p. 47