Julio Cortazar Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Skill alone cannot teach or produce a great short story, which condenses the obsession of the creature; it is a hallucinatory presence manifest from the first sentence to fascinate the reader, to make him lose contact with the dull reality that surrounds him, submerging him in another that is more intense and compelling.

  Julio Cortazar

  Reality, Skills, Stories

  69 Copy quote

• Happy was she who could believe without seeing, who was at one with the duration and continuity of life.

  Julio Cortazar

  Believe, Continuity Of Life, Duration

  Julio Cortazar (2016). “Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much”, p.66, Everyman's Library

  25 Copy quote

• I'm such a jerk; it had never occurred to me that when we look at a photo from the front, the eyes reproduce exactly the position and the vision of the lens; it's these things that are taken for granted and it never occurs to anyone to think about them.

  Julio Cortazar

  Taken, Eye, Thinking

  Julio Cortazar (2016). “Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much”, p.712, Everyman's Library

  66 Copy quote

• Memory weaves and traps us at the same time according to a scheme in which we do not participate: we should never speak of our memory, for it is anything but ours; it works on its own terms, it assists us while deceiving us or perhaps deceives up to assist us.

  Julio Cortazar

  Memories, Speak, Deceiving

  19 Copy quote

• Why have we had to invent Eden, to live submerged in the nostalgia of a lost paradise, to make up utopias, propose a future for ourselves?

  Julio Cortazar

  Eden, Paradise, Nostalgia

  Julio Cortazar (2016). “Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much”, p.210, Everyman's Library

  10 Copy quote

• I think it is vanity to want to put into a story anything but the story itself.

  Julio Cortazar

  Thinking, Vanity, Stories

  16 Copy quote

• The mysterious does not spell itself out in capital letters, as many writers believe, but is always between, an interstice.

  Julio Cortazar

  Believe, Doe, Letters

  9 Copy quote

• Before going back to sleep I imagined (I saw) a plastic universe, changeable, full of wondrous chance, an elastic sky, a sun that suddenly is missing or remains fixed or changes its shape.

  Julio Cortazar

  Sleep, Sky, Missing

  Julio Cortazar (2014). “Hopscotch: A Novel”, p.470, Pantheon

  28 Copy quote

• The unusual is only found in a very small percentage, except in literary creations, and that is exactly what makes literature.

  Julio Cortazar

  Literature, Unusual, Creation

  23 Copy quote

• (memory is) A strange echo, which stores its replicas according to some other acoustic than consciousness or expectation.

  Julio Cortazar

  Memories, Echoes, Expectations

  41 Copy quote

• Literature is ... a game, but it's a game one can put one's life into.

  Julio Cortazar

  Games, Literature

  8 Copy quote

• I can't think of another writer who can move me as surreptitiously as Vian does

  Julio Cortazar

  Moving, Thinking, Doe

  13 Copy quote

• [Heaven is] that moment in which something attains its maximum depth, its maximum reach, its maximum sense, and becomes completely uninteresting.

  Julio Cortazar

  Heaven, Depth, Moments

  11 Copy quote

• When one wants to write, one writes. If one is condemned to write, one writes.

  Julio Cortazar

  Writing, Want, Ifs

  31 Copy quote

• One of the many ways of contesting level-zero, and one of the best, is to take photographs, an activity in which one should start becoming adept very early in life, teach it to children since it requires discipline, aesthetic education, a good eye and steady fingers.

  Julio Cortazar

  Zero, Children, Eye

  Julio Cortazar (2016). “Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much”, p.705, Everyman's Library

  22 Copy quote

• There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls. I went to see them at the aquarium at the Jardin des Plantes and stayed for hours watching them, observing their immobility; their faint movements. Now I am an axolotl.

  Julio Cortazar

  Aquariums, Movement, Hours

  Julio Cortazar (2016). “Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much”, p.620, Everyman's Library

  29 Copy quote

• The best literature is always a take [in the musical sense]; there is an implicit risk in its execution, a margin of danger that is the pleasure of the flight, of the love, carrying with it a tangible loss but also a total engagement that, on another level, lends the theater its unparalleled imperfection faced with the perfection of film. I don’t want to write anything but takes.

  Julio Cortazar

  Writing, Loss, Perfection

  36 Copy quote

• Once in a while it happens that I vomit up a bunny... it's not reason for one to blush and isolate oneself and to walk around keeping one's mouth shut.

  Julio Cortazar

  Mouths, Bunnies, Reason

  36 Copy quote

• What good is a writer if he can't destroy literature? And us... what good are we if we don't help as much as we can in that destruction?

  Julio Cortazar

  Literature, Helping, Destruction

  Julio Cortazar (2016). “Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much”, p.491, Everyman's Library

  18 Copy quote

• Salt and the center of the world have to be there, in that spot on the tablecloth.

  Julio Cortazar

  Food, Cooking, World

  Julio Cortazar (2016). “Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much”, p.588, Everyman's Library

  7 Copy quote

• The modern story begun, one might say, with Edgar Allan Poe, which proceeds inexorably, like a machine destined to accomplish its mission with the maximum economy of means.

  Julio Cortazar

  Mean, Machines, Stories

  27 Copy quote

• For me the thing that signals a great story is what we might call its autonomy, the fact that it detaches itself from its author like a soap bubble blown from a clay pipe.

  Julio Cortazar

  Clay, Soap Bubbles, Stories

  20 Copy quote

• Now that I think about it, it seems to me that’s what Idiocy is: the ability to be enthusiastic all the time about anything you like, so that a drawing on the wall does not have to be diminished by the memory of the frescoes of Giotto in Padua.

  Julio Cortazar

  Wall, Memories, Thinking

  21 Copy quote

• La Maga did not know that my kisses were like eyes which began to open up beyond her, and that I went along outside as if I saw a different concept of the world, the dizzy pilot of a black prow which cut the water of time and negated it.

  Julio Cortazar

  Eye, Cutting, Kissing

  Julio Cortazar (2014). “Hopscotch: A Novel”, p.25, Pantheon

  18 Copy quote

• The more a book is like an opium pipe, the more the Chinaman reader is satisfied with it and tends to discuss the quality of the drug rather than its lethargic effects.

  Julio Cortazar

  Book, Drug, Quality

  14 Copy quote

Page 2 of 3

First

← Prev

1

2

3

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin