Nathalie Sarraute

“Television has lifted the manufacture of banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry.”

“One can't write for all readers. A poet cannot write for people who don't like poetry.”

“Those who live in a world of human beings can only retrace their steps.”

“All psychological research is completely barred by the interpretations of the psychoanalysts. Everything happens in the unconscious, and I don't know what this unconscious is.”

“I have often heard that the novel is dead. But I see novels produced, I don't know how many a week, in France. I have the impression it's carrying along quite well.”

“I have never sought the reason why I write.”

“The act of writing is a kind of catharsis, a liberation, but I never really concerned myself with that. I write because it interests me.”

“I don't admire Freud as much as some people do. Imagine Shakespeare being aware of the Oedipal complex when he wrote Hamlet. It would have been a disaster.”

“Women have seen that they have locked themselves up with feminist writing.”

“Literature is always trying to show other parts of this immense universe in which we live. It's endless. I'm sure there will be other writers who will discover new worlds.”

“The novel moves like all the arts. It's transforming itself all the time.”

“One can't write without having read - you have to read before beginning to write - and universities offer a very good opportunity to read.”

“It's the duty of all novelists, all painters, all musicians, all people who try to make art move: to look for something they feel authentically, without paying attention to styles.”

“Suspicion is one of the morbid reactions by which an organism defends itself and seeks another equilibrium.”

“It's a question of not copying the masters, to look for something, good or bad, for oneself. To enter this liberated state of mind, one cannot copy the others.”

“The reader has to be creative when he's reading. He has to try to make the thing alive. A good reader has to do a certain amount of work when he is reading.”