Harry Mathews Quotes

• There are many things I’ve written that I didn’t really understand until a long time later.

  Harry Mathews

  Long, Long Time, Written

  47 Copy quote

• Translation is the paradigm, the exemplar of all writing.... It is translation that demonstrates most vividly the yearning for transformation that underlies every act involving speech, that supremely human gift.

  Harry Mathews

  Writing, Speech, Transformation

  Harry Mathews (2002). “The Human Country: New and Collected Stories”

  16 Copy quote

• Syntax and vocabulary are overwhelming constraints --the rules that run us. Language is using us to talk --we think we're using the language, but language is doing the thinking, we're its slavish agents.

  Harry Mathews

  Running, Thinking, Vocabulary

  11 Copy quote

• You make something. You give up expressing and start inventing.

  Harry Mathews

  Giving Up, Giving, Inventing

  7 Copy quote

• It’s true, I had an extremely delicious life, but that was my life at home, and perhaps because I was only a child, or for whatever reasons, I found the company of others, especially other boys, quite terrifying and upsetting.

  Harry Mathews

  Children, Home, Boys

  Interview with John Ashbery, www.dalkeyarchive.com. 1987.

  4 Copy quote

• I left Princeton, but I graduated Harvard, in 1952.

  Harry Mathews

  Harvard, Princeton, Left

  Interview with John Ashbery, www.dalkeyarchive.com. 1987.

  16 Copy quote

• I think situations are more important than plot and character.

  Harry Mathews

  Character, Thinking, Important

  "Agent Provocateur: Harry Matthews with Johannah Rogers". The Brooklyn Rail Interview, brooklynrail.org. June 1, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

• I was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, for a while, about which the less said the better, and then I was in the Mediterranean, about which the more said the better.

  Harry Mathews

  Virginia, Norfolk, Said

  7 Copy quote

• Music had been my first love among the arts, and I was fascinated by it, as I still am.

  Harry Mathews

  Art, First Love, Firsts

  Interview with John Ashbery, www.dalkeyarchive.com. 1987.

  4 Copy quote

• I also had this mistaken dream, fantasy really - perhaps because I'm good at languages - of being able in both Italy and France to become someone else through my fluency in the language.

  Harry Mathews

  Dream, Able, France

  "Agent Provocateur: Harry Matthews with Johannah Rogers". The Brooklyn Rail Interview, brooklynrail.org. June 1, 2005.

  60 Copy quote

• And I finished college because I thought how much it would upset my parents if I didnt.

  Harry Mathews

  College, Parent, Upset

  Interview with John Ashbery, www.dalkeyarchive.com. 1987.

  4 Copy quote

• My dream, I remember, when I went to boarding school, was to have a study all my own, a little nook someplace where nobody could get at me - nobody, like the football coach.

  Harry Mathews

  Football, Dream, School

  Interview with John Ashbery, www.dalkeyarchive.com. 1987.

  6 Copy quote

• I graduated in 1952 and went to Europe, with Niki and our first child Laura, who was then a year old.

  Harry Mathews

  Children, Years, Europe

  7 Copy quote

• My idea was to go to Vienna to study conducting and perhaps play in an orchestra first, so I thought before I got to Vienna I could do with a little training in Paris.

  Harry Mathews

  Play, Ideas, Paris

  60 Copy quote

• Write about the things that attract you. Choose your subjects the way you used to choose your toys: out of desire.

  Harry Mathews

  Writing, Desire, Way

  Harry Mathews (1991). “Immeasurable distances: the collected essays”, Lapis Pr

  4 Copy quote

• I'd been brought up on the Upper East Side in a WASP society, which was death on crutches.

  Harry Mathews

  Easter, Upper East Side, Sides

  "Agent Provocateur: Harry Matthews with Johannah Rogers". The Brooklyn Rail Interview, brooklynrail.org. June 1, 2005.

  56 Copy quote

• What I said about John was that he liberated me from my anxieties about writing in a correct, acceptable way.

  Harry Mathews

  Writing, Anxiety, Way

  "Agent Provocateur: Harry Matthews with Johannah Rogers". Interview with Johannah Rodgers, brooklynrail.org. June 1, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

• After the navy, I transferred to Harvard and finished there. I was there the spring term of 1951 and I stayed through the summer term and a whole other year, so I was able to do two years in a little less than a year and a half.

  Harry Mathews

  Summer, Spring, Years

  Interview with John Ashbery, www.dalkeyarchive.com. 1987.

  7 Copy quote

• And then, when I left Princeton in the middle of my sophomore year, I went into the navy.

  Harry Mathews

  Years, Navy, Sophomore

  Interview with John Ashbery, www.dalkeyarchive.com. 1987.

  60 Copy quote

• It has always been something I could do, and it may seem odd that in my case I seem to create an interesting narrative and frustrate the readers opportunities to follow it at every step.

  Harry Mathews

  Opportunity, Interesting, May

  "Agent Provocateur: Harry Matthews with Johannah Rogers". The Brooklyn Rail Interview, brooklynrail.org. June 1, 2005.

  7 Copy quote

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