Nathalie Sarraute Quotes

• Poetry is what makes the invisible appear.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Invisible, Poetry Is

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• It's the duty of all novelists, all painters, all musicians, all people who try to make art move: to look for something they feel authentically, without paying attention to styles.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Art, Moving, People

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• Women have seen that they have locked themselves up with feminist writing.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Writing, Feminist, Locked

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• Those who live in a world of human beings can only retrace their steps.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  World, Steps, Humans

  Nathalie Sarraute (1990). “The age of suspicion: essays on the novel”, George Braziller

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• For me, the poetry in a work is that which makes visible the invisible.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Poetry, Invisible, Visible

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• The reader has to be creative when he's reading. He has to try to make the thing alive. A good reader has to do a certain amount of work when he is reading.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Reading, Creative, Trying

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• Neither reproaches nor encouragements are able to revive a faith that is waning.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Faith, Encouragement, Able

  Nathalie Sarraute (1990). “The age of suspicion: essays on the novel”, George Braziller

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• We're swallowed up only when we are willing for it to happen.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Willing, Happens

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• Literature is always trying to show other parts of this immense universe in which we live. It's endless. I'm sure there will be other writers who will discover new worlds.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Always Trying, Literature, World

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• Suspicion is one of the morbid reactions by which an organism defends itself and seeks another equilibrium.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Morbid, Reactions, Equilibrium

  Nathalie Sarraute (1990). “The age of suspicion: essays on the novel”, George Braziller

  9 Copy quote

• Television has lifted the manufacture of banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Media, Television, Spheres

  Times Literary Supplement 10 June 1960

  72 Copy quote

• I have never sought the reason why I write.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Writing, Reason Why, Reason

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• The act of writing is a kind of catharsis, a liberation, but I never really concerned myself with that. I write because it interests me.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Writing, Catharsis, Kind

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• One can't write for all readers. A poet cannot write for people who don't like poetry.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Writing, People, Poet

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• It's a question of not copying the masters, to look for something, good or bad, for oneself. To enter this liberated state of mind, one cannot copy the others.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Mind, Copying, Looks

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• I don't for a minute think that Hitler is like Joan of Arc. But I think that at that deep level of tropisms, Hitler or Stalin must have experienced the same tropisms as anyone else.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Thinking, Levels, Minutes

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• I have often heard that the novel is dead. But I see novels produced, I don't know how many a week, in France. I have the impression it's carrying along quite well.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  France, Week, Impression

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• I don't admire Freud as much as some people do. Imagine Shakespeare being aware of the Oedipal complex when he wrote Hamlet. It would have been a disaster.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  People, Imagine, Disaster

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• Le mot 'psychologie'est un de ceux qu'aucun auteur d'aujourd'hui ne peut entendre prononcer a' son sujet sans baisser les yeux et rougir. The word 'psychology' is one that no author today can hear said about her work without lowering her eyes and blushing.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Eye, Son, Psychology

  1956 L'E' re du soupc - on.

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• All psychological research is completely barred by the interpretations of the psychoanalysts. Everything happens in the unconscious, and I don't know what this unconscious is.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Everything Happens For A Reason, Research, Psychological

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• The novel moves like all the arts. It's transforming itself all the time.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Art, Moving, Novel

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• Chacun peut e prouver en soi ce double mouvement: de s ir de s'inte grer a' la socie te , besoin de se re aliser par soi-me" me en dehors d'elle. We all have this double impulse within ourselves: the desire to integrate into society, and the need to fulfil ourselves outside of it, through our own efforts.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Effort, Desire, Needs

  La Quinzaine litte raire, 50.

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• One can't write without having read - you have to read before beginning to write - and universities offer a very good opportunity to read.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Writing, Opportunity, Very Good

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