Words matter. These are the best Ismail Kadare Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible… The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship.
If I manage to write something that I consider good and valuable in a particular place, that spot automatically has a special aura for me. In Albania, there are two cities where I have written the majority of my work: Gjirokaster, my home city, and Tirana.
Literature led me to freedom, not the other way round.
The great universal literature has always had a tragic relation with freedom. The Greeks renounced absolute freedom and imposed order on chaotic mythology, like a tyrant.
I first came across the script for ‘Macbeth’ between the ages of 11 and 12; it was the first book that shook my life. Because I did not yet understand that I could simply purchase it in a bookstore, I copied much of it by hand and took it home. My childhood imagination pushed me to feel like a co-author of the play.
It is well known that in the Communist countries, and especially in my own, Albania, readers were often called upon to demonstrate their vigilance by detecting and denouncing the ‘errors’ of authors.
Having spent the greater part of my life under a Communist dictatorship, I am very familiar with the Bolshevik mentality according to which an author in general, and an eminent author in particular, is always guilty, and must be punished accordingly.
I work only in the morning from 10 to noon. I still write by hand. I interrupt my writing when I feel that I’ve discovered something beautiful or, on the contrary, when I feel discontent.
I am of the opinion that I am not a political writer, and, moreover, that as far as true literature is concerned, there actually are no political writers. I think that my writing is no more political than ancient Greek theatre. I would have become the writer I am in any political regime.
I consider I’ve had a good day when, among the lines I’ve written, I’ve produced from my innermost core what I call ‘the appearance of the pearl.’ That could refer to a discovery, a sense of harmonious cohesiveness, or something like that.
For a writer, personal freedom is not so important. It is not individual freedom that guarantees the greatness of literature; otherwise, writers in democratic countries would be superior to all others. Some of the greatest writers wrote under dictatorship – Shakespeare, Cervantes.
