Ismail Kadare

“They had never previously been obliged to engage in such mental effort, and it gave them headaches. However, although the aim of their quest forever eluded them, they ended up finding its ou...”

“I couldn't get to sleep. The book lay nearby. A thin object on the divan. So strange. Between two cardboard covers were noises, doors, howls, horses, people. All side by side, pressed tightl...”

“The great universal literature has always had a tragic relation with freedom. The Greeks renounced absolute freedom and imposed order on chaotic mythology, like a tyrant.”

“The founding father of Albanian literature is the nineteenth-century writer Naim Frasheri. Without having the greatness of Dante or Shakespeare, he is nonetheless the founder, the emblematic...”

“If I manage to write something that I consider good and valuable in a particular place, that spot automatically has a special aura for me. In Albania, there are two cities where I have writt...”

“I thought for a long time about leaving Albania, but at the same time to play a role in its life.”

“It is well known that in the Communist countries, and especially in my own, Albania, readers were often called upon to demonstrate their vigilance by detecting and denouncing the 'errors' of...”

“For a writer, New York works well. Literary work is very elitist. I worked two hours a day, maximum, and the time after that was very agreeable. I walked a lot with pleasure. Those two hours...”

“Guidebooks used to write the name of my city in two ways: Gjirokaster in Albanian, and Argyrokastron for foreigners. The classical-sounding name somehow gave it better credentials, because p...”

“Having spent the greater part of my life under a Communist dictatorship, I am very familiar with the Bolshevik mentality according to which an author in general, and an eminent author in par...”

“For a writer, personal freedom is not so important. It is not individual freedom that guarantees the greatness of literature; otherwise, writers in democratic countries would be superior to...”

“We cannot deny that 80 or even 90 percent of the spiritual treasures from the past 3,000 years have come from Europe. There is no other Greek theatre anywhere else in the world. There is no...”

“I consider I've had a good day when, among the lines I've written, I've produced from my innermost core what I call 'the appearance of the pearl.' That could refer to a discovery, a sense of...”

“For me as a writer, Albanian is simply an extraordinary means of expression - rich, malleable, adaptable. As I have said in my latest novel, 'Spiritus,' it has modalities that exist only in...”

“In general, literature is a natural adversary of totalitarianism. Tyrannical governments all view literature in the same way: as their enemy. I lived for a long time in a totalitarian state,...”