27 Quotes by Ricardo Piglia

The idea of a small circle, of an exalted and loyal sect, except with a traitor infiltrated at its core, an informant who's not foreign to the sect, but constitutes an essential part of its structure---this was the true organizational form of any small society. One must act knowing that there's a traitor infiltrated in the ranks.

A story is nothing more than a reproduction of the order of the world on a purely verbal scale. A replica of life, if life consisted of words. But life does not consist just of words. Unfortunately, it is also made up of bodies or, in other words, of disease, pain and death.

He wrote very well in those days, as it happens, much better than he does now. He had absolute convictions, and style is nothing more than the absolute conviction of possessing a style.

There is never a first time in memory, it is only in life that the future is uncertain, in memory the pain always returns in precisely the same manner, rushing to the present, you have to avoid certain places as you go over the past with the eye of the camera, whoever looks at himself on such a screen loses all hope.

There is never a first time in memory, it is only in life that the future is uncertain, in memory the pain always returns in precisely the same manner, rushing to the present, you have to avoid certain places as you go over the past with the eye of the camera, whoever looks at himself on such s a screen loses all hope.

Estoy convencido de que nunca nos sucede nada que no hayamos previsto, nada para lo que no estemos preparados. Nos han tocado malos tiempos, como a todos los hombres, y hay que aprender a vivir sin ilusiones

A ratos preocupado porque llevo muchos meses sin escribir, marcado por el vértigo y la circulación social. Reuniones, fiestas, entretenimientos. Decidido a terminar con esa farsa y sentarme a escribir salga como salga, por fin.

There’s another quote on the act of writing letters, have a look: Letter writing is a truly anachronistic genre, a sort of tardy inheritance of the eighteenth century; those who lived at that time believed in the pure truth of the written word. And we? Times have changed; words are lost with ever greater ease; you can see them float on the waters of history; sink, come up again, mixed in by the current with the water hyacinths.

A poet without memory, said Marconi, is like a criminal and nearly undone by feelings of decency. A poet without memory is an oxymoron. Because the poet is the memory of the language.