Quotes By Manuel Puig

I didn't choose literature. Literature chose me. There was no decision on my side.

What better model of a synthesis than a nocturnal dream? Dreams simplify, don't they?

Writers are not meant for action.

What's better, a poetic intuition or an intellectual work? I think they complement each other.

I have written every one of my novels to convince somebody of something.

I've always wondered why there isn't a great French novel about the German occupation. The nouveau roman authors weren't interested in telling that sort of thing.

I locate that special problem in a character and then try to understand it. That's the genesis of all my work.

Tardiness in literature can make me nervous.

For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free.

As a rule, one should never place form over content.

I am very interested in what has been called bad taste. I believe the fear of displaying a soi-disant bad taste stops us from venturing into special cultural zones.

It's essential not to have an ideology, not to be a member of a political party. While the writer can have certain political views, he has to be careful not to have his hands tied.

I would very much like to become a best-selling author.

I do believe that reading can help you understand what you're writing and see what others are doing. But sometimes the desire for more information can act as an inhibitor.

The essayist has to follow a certain intellectual pattern. The novelist has the advantage of using fantasy, of being subjective.

It's my own personal unconscious that ultimately creates the novel's aesthetic facade.

The translator's task is to create, in his or her own language, the same tensions appearing in the original. That's hard!

I can work in films as long as the story doesn't have a realistic nature. If I'm working with an allegory, a fantasy, it can be developed in synthetic terms.

If it's great stuff, the people who consume it are nourished. It's a positive force.

In a country like France, so ancient, their history is full of outstanding people, so they carry a heavy weight on their back. Who could write in French after Proust or Flaubert?

One performs a very different act when reading a movie and when reading a novel. Your attention behaves differently.

I haven't been the kind of writer about whom book-length academic studies have been written.

I write for somebody who has my own limitations. My reader has a certain difficulty with concentrating, which in my case comes from being a film viewer.

I only understand realism.

My greatest aspiration was always to live in the tropics.

All of my problems are rather complicated - I need an entire novel to deal with them, not a short story or a movie. It's like a personal therapy.

I'm not a best-seller, but through translations, I've accumulated some money.

I've never seen a worse situation than that of young writers in the United States. The publishing business in North America is so commercialized.

The writer needs to react to his or her own internal universe, to his or her own point of view. If he or she doesn't have a personal point of view, it's impossible to be a creator.

I believe realism is nothing but an analysis of reality. Film scripts have a synthetical constitution.