When one wants to write, one writes. If one is condemned to write, one writes. Julio Cortazar More Quotes by Julio Cortazar More Quotes From Julio Cortazar 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 soap-bubblesclaystories Where are the beginnings, the endings, and most important, the middles? Julio Cortazar important I can't think of another writer who can move me as surreptitiously as Vian does Julio Cortazar doemovingthinking 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 kissingcuttingeye 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 qualitydrugbook The fantastic breaks the crust of appearance … something grabs us by the shoulders to throw us outside ourselves. I have always known that the big surprises await us where we have learned to be surprised by nothing, that is, where we are not shocked by ruptures in the order. Julio Cortazar rupturesurpriseorder Nothing is more comical than seriousness understood as a virtue that has to precede all important literature Julio Cortazar virtueimportantliterature The mysterious does not spell itself out in capital letters, as many writers believe, but is always between, an interstice. Julio Cortazar doelettersbelieve I raised the camera, pretended to study a focus which did not include them, and waited and watched closely, sure that I would finally catch the revealing expression, one that would sum it all up, life that is rhythmed by movement but which a stiff image destroys, taking time in cross section, if we do not choose the essential imperceptible fraction of it. Julio Cortazar camerasfocusexpression I have never described this to you before, not so much, I don't think, from lack of truthfulness as that, just naturally, one is not going to explain to people at large that from time to time one vomits up a small rabbit. Julio Cortazar rabbitspeoplethinking You're like a witness. You're the one who goes to the museum and looks at the paintings. I mean the paintings are there and you're in the museum too, near and far away at the same time. I'm a painting. Rocamadour is a painting. Etienne is a painting, this room is a painting. You think that you're in the room but you're not. You're looking at the room, you're not in the room. Julio Cortazar museumsmeanthinking 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 paradisenostalgiaeden Salt and the center of the world have to be there, in that spot on the tablecloth. Julio Cortazar cookingfoodworld Literature is ... a game, but it's a game one can put one's life into. Julio Cortazar literaturegames The short-story writer knows that he can't proceed cumulatively, that time is not his ally. His only solution is to work vertically, heading up or down in literary space. Julio Cortazar story-writersalliesspace And do you accept the idea that there is no explanation? Julio Cortazar ideaacceptyouexplanation
