Sergio Pitol - The Art of Flight:

"As I recall that time, I do not think that "I was living another life," as people usually say, but rather that the person I'm talking about was not entirely me..." (8)

"The difference between who I am now and who I was then is defined by my passion for reading and my aversion for any manifestation of power." (10)

"I wrote the autobiographical essay out of vanity, or frivolity, or inertia." (10)

"The book that someone intended to write, and for which he took countless notes for years, suddenly came to a standstill, ceased to be a project; something unexpected, beyond his control, began to take shape. That's how things work. Ask again what we are, where we are going, and a fist in the mouth will rid you of the few teeth you have left." (22)

"A king is a king and therefore his greatness cannot be dishonored by a solecism or a spelling mistake; a philosophyer, no matter how genius, is only a philosopher and should know his place." (24)

"Everything was real, everything was true and, unfortunately, repeatable." (64)

"I learned that nothing remarkable in the arts can happen if a connection is not reestablished with past achievements; irrefutable proof of this is Picasso's portrait of Gertrude Stein, housed in this very museum. By failing to maintain a living dialogue with the classics, the artist, the writer, runs the risk of spending his life reinventing the wheel. I know nothing more reductive than the cult of style. The task of the writer consists of enriching tradition, even if he venerates it one day and comes to blow with it the next. Either way, he will be aware of its existence. This is why problems of form, tehcniques, and possibilities of genres, and their capacity for transformation have attracted and interested me." (148)

"Being a writer is to become a stranger, a foreigner: you have to start to translate yourself. Writing is a case of impersonation, forging an identity: writing is passing yourself off as someone else." (154, ostensibly Justo Navarro's prologue to Auster's the Red Notebook)

"One can — and should‚ write in a way that is different and even antagonistic to these writers. The mere existence of a great creator erases many of his contemporaries and multitudes of predecessors whose mediocrity only becomes obvious after the appearance of a greater figure." (176)

"Perhaps in a bar, on a walk, in a party, I will suddenly regret not being in my garret, where I could take notes... and write letters that I owe, and, above all, write stories, make up stories, write, write, write instead of drink like a Pole and go about life from binge to binge, instead of ruining my health, altering my nervous system, wasting my faculties, time, and energy only later to fully become the loser that at this moment I feel predestined to be." (198)

"For the writer, language is everthing.
Form, structure, and every element of a story — plot, characters, tone, gestuality, revelation, or prophecy — are all products of language." (209)

"A basic rule, articulated by Gide: "Never take advantage of momemtum already gained" Does each book, then, have to start from zero?" (64)

"... the reality of being gradually atrophies, while the function of seeming, of pretending, grows disproportionately larger. Court life requires a permanent ability to make believe. Its ceremonies become a never-ending performance that demands more complex dramatic talents and more stylized techniques than those required on the stage." (244)

"Cyril Connolly asserts that the writer must aspire to write a work of genius. Otherwise, he is lost... Every writer should from the beginning remain faithful to his potential and try to refine it; have the greatest respect for language, keep it alive, update it if possible; not make concessions to anyone, least of all to power or to trends; and contemplate in his work the boldest challenges it is possible to conceive." (265)

"Reading is a secret game of approximations and distances. It is also a lottery. One arrives at a book by unusual means; one stumbles upon an author by apparent coincidence only to never be able to stop reading him." (293)

"October 27: I want to die. I want to die. I want to die. Death seems the ideal solution. I would like to die. Life is unbearable for me. I have no desire to live. I want to die..." Mann often speaks of his modesty, his life as a recluse, his exclusion from the world, when in fact his life constitutes a daily and ongoing relationship with fame. The slightest sense of failure is unbearable for him... His work discipline is exemplary, admirable, and heroic throughout his life. Knowing that he is the owner of a word that others are anxiously awaiting — a single word to awaken or reassure his flock — gives him in due course a sense of continuity." (308)

"That would be like condemning Walter Benjamin, Picasso, Tibor Dery, and hundreds of intellectuals who believed in the possibility of changing the world." (356)

"But we must think that if it is true that we are living in cruel times, it is also true that we are in a time of wonders." (390)