Quotes By Manuel Puig

My pleasure was to copy, not to create.

I am only interested in bad taste if I can enjoy a gruesome tango or watch a movie that makes me cry.

We should try to understand our innermost needs. We shouldn't use irony to reduce their power.

I felt the need to tell stories to understand myself.

My stories are very somber, so I think I need the comic ingredient. Besides, life has so much humor.

Teaching is a good distraction, and I am in contact with young people, which is very gratifying.

I don't want to name names, but the least I can say about rock and roll is that I'm suspicious.

Whenever I write, I'm always thinking of the reader.

In film, you can't go into analytical explorations because the audience will reject that.

I'm not terribly happy about rock and roll. Certain rock music is uninspiring, numbing; it makes you feel like an idiot.

Modern American cinema seems to me superficial. The intention is to understand a certain reality, and the result is nothing but a photographing of that reality.

If the novelist shares his or her problems with the characters, he or she is able to study his personal unconscious.

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

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

I don't have traceable literary models because I haven't had great literary influences in my life.

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

Writers are not meant for action.

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

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.

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

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.

Tardiness in literature can make me nervous.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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