9 quotes
"Old" and "new" are the perennial poles of all feeling and sense of orientation in the world.
Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
Literature offers not only myths but counter-myths, just as life offers counter-experiences — experiences that confound what you thought you thought, or felt, or believed.
Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
The United States is a generically religious society. That is, in the United States it's not important which religion you adhere to, as long as you have one.
Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
All modern wars, even when their aims are the traditional ones, such as territorial aggrandizement or the acquisition of scarce resources, are cast as clashes of civilizations — culture wars — with each side claiming the high ground, and characterizing the other as barbaric.
Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
Literature was freedom. Especially in a time in which the values of reading and inwardness are so strenuously challenged, literature is freedom.
Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
From "old" Europe's point of view, America seems bent on squandering the admiration — and gratitude — felt by most Europeans.
Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
To have access to literature, world literature, was to escape the prison of national vanity, of philistinism, of compulsory provincialism, of inane schooling, of imperfect destinies and bad luck.
Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
We are told we must choose — the old or the new. In fact, we must choose both. What is a life if not a series of negotiations between the old and the new? It seems to me that one should always be seeking to talk oneself out of these stark oppositions.
Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what wickedness human beings are capable of; and not be corrupted — made cynical, superficial — by this understanding.
Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)