75 Quotes by Antonio Tabucchi

Él volvió a sonreír con su sonrisa triste y culpable, y yo comprendí que me había equivocado de nuevo, que no era un don tener mucha memoria en un lugar como aquél.

Porque na vida há tantos tipos de perspectivas, as chamadas grandes perspectivas, que todos consideram fundamentais, e as que eu chamo microperspectivas, que serão insignificantes, admito-o, mas se tudo é relativo, se a natureza concede que existam águias e formigas, por que razão, digo eu, não se poderá viver como as formigas, de microperspectivas?

The salt of any interesting civilization is mixture.

People with lots of doubts sometimes find life more oppressive and exhausting than others, but they're more energetic - they aren't robots.

I don't know whether these people are going to find themselves, but as they live their lives they have no choice but to face up to the image others have of them. They're forced to look at themselves in a mirror, and they often manage to glimpse something of themselves.

Like a blazing comet, I've traversed infinite nights, interstellar spaces of the imagination, voluptuousness and fear. I've been a man, a woman, an old person, a little girl, I've been the crowds on the grand boulevards of the capital cities of the West, I've been the serene Buddha of the East, whose calm and wisdom we envy. I've known honor and dishonor, enthusiasm and exhaustion. ...I've been the sun and the moon, and everything because life is not enough.

Xenophobia manifests itself especially against civilizations and cultures that are weak because they lack economic resources, means of subsistence or land. So nomadic people are the first targets of this kind of aggression.

But democracy isn't a state of perfection. It has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.

Fifty years after half a million gypsies were exterminated in the Second World War - thousands of them in Auschwitz - we're again preparing the mass killing of this minority.