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Home
Authors
Antonio Tabucchi
Italian
Writer
About the author
Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Ideas
#Perfection
#Dictators
The salt of any interesting civilization is mixture.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Civilization
Xenophobia manifests itself especially against civilizations and cultures that are weak because they lack economic resources, means of subsistence or land. So nomadic people are the first targets of this kind of aggression.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#People
#First
#Land
#Aggression
#Xenophobia
When you have a foreign invasion - in this case by the Indonesian army - writers, intellectuals, newspapers and magazines are the first targets of repression.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#First
#Writers
#Army
#Newspapers
#Intellectuals
#Repression
There are some fundamental values it's impossible to be wrong about.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Wrong
#Values
The most important basis of any novel is wanting to be someone else, and this means creating a character.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Character
Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Dreams
#Fantasy
#Job
#Literature
No, I'm happy to go on living the life I've chosen. I'm a university teacher and I like my job.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Life
#Living
#Job
#University
My job is to look at what politics is doing, not be a politician myself.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Job
#Politics
It's very useful when politicians have doubts because there are so many choices to be made in the world.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#World
#Choices
#Politicians
My books are about losers, about people who've lost their way and are engaged in a search.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#People
#Books
We all want to be someone else but without ceasing to be ourselves. I think it's very important to defend this idea in real life too.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Want
#Life
#Idea
Literature is my life of course, but from an ontological point of view. From an existential point of view, I like being a teacher.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Life
#Being
#Literature
People with lots of doubts sometimes find life more oppressive and exhausting than others, but they're more energetic - they aren't robots.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Life
#People
I don't want to promote my own image either. I don't like going on television or mixing in literary circles.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Want
#Television
#Literary
In a novel, my feelings and sense of outrage can find a broader means of expression which would be more symbolic and applicable to many European countries.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Sense
#Expression
#Feelings
#Countries
I've always been drawn to tormented people full of contradictions.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#People
I was born in the Second World War during the Nazi invasion of my country.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#World
#War
#Country
#World war
I vividly remember the stories my grandfather told me about the carnage of the First World War, which people tend to forget was one of the worst massacres in human history.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#People
#Forget
#World
#War
#First
#History
#World war
I live quietly at home among my family and friends.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Family
#Home
#Friends
I don't know whether these people are going to find themselves, but as they live their lives they have no choice but to face up to the image others have of them. They're forced to look at themselves in a mirror, and they often manage to glimpse something of themselves.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#People
#Choice
It's the job of intellectuals and writers to cast doubt on perfection.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Writers
#Job
#Perfection
#Doubt
#Intellectuals
I prefer insomnia to anaesthesia.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
As a writer, I've always been interested in others.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Writer
But democracy isn't a state of perfection. It has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Democracy
#State
#Perfection
#Vigilance
An intellectual is going to have doubts, for example, about a fundamentalist religious doctrine that admits no doubt, about an imposed political system that allows no doubt, about a perfect aesthetic that has no room for doubt.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Doubt
#Example
#Doctrine
#Religious
But I don't think I have any particular talent for prediction, because when you have three or four elements in hand, you don't have to be a genius to reach certain conclusions.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Talent
#Genius
I don't have any doubts either about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Perhaps some more should be added to the list, but I don't have the slightest doubt about human rights.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Doubt
#Rights
#Human rights
I don't go for people who lead full and satisfying lives.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#People
I claim the right to take a stand once in a while.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Right
Fifty years after half a million gypsies were exterminated in the Second World War - thousands of them in Auschwitz - we're again preparing the mass killing of this minority.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Years
#World
#War
#Killing
#Minority
#World war
Eco sees the intellectual as an organizer of culture, someone who can run a magazine or a museum. An administrator, in fact. I think this is a melancholy situation for an intellectual.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer
#Culture
#Fact
#Melancholy
Doubts are like stains on a shirt. I like shirts with stains, because when I'm given a shirt that's too clean, one that's completely white, I immediately start having doubts.
Antonio Tabucchi,
Italian
Writer