Antonio Tabucchi quotes:

I vividly remember the stories my grandfather told me about the carnage of the First World War, which people tend to forget was one of the worst massacres in human history.

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.

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.

Literature is my life of course, but from an ontological point of view. From an existential point of view, I like being a teacher.

I don't have any doubts either about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Perhaps some more should be added to the list, but I don't have the slightest doubt about human rights.

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

No, I'm happy to go on living the life I've chosen. I'm a university teacher and I like my job.

I was born in the Second World War during the Nazi invasion of my country.

I live quietly at home among my family and friends.

The most important basis of any novel is wanting to be someone else, and this means creating a character.

I was born in the Second World War during the Nazi invasion of my country."

The salt of any interesting civilization is mixture.

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

Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.

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 don't want to promote my own image either. I don't like going on television or mixing in literary circles.

I prefer insomnia to anaesthesia.

Eco sees the intellectual as an organizer of culture, someone who can run a magazine or a museum. An administrator, in fact. I think this is a melancholy situation for an intellectual.

Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.

An intellectual is going to have doubts, for example, about a fundamentalist religious doctrine that admits no doubt, about an imposed political system that allows no doubt, about a perfect aesthetic that has no room for doubt.

I claim the right to take a stand once in a while.

In a novel, my feelings and sense of outrage can find a broader means of expression which would be more symbolic and applicable to many European countries.

My job is to look at what politics is doing, not be a politician myself.

I've always been drawn to tormented people full of contradictions.

But I don't think I have any particular talent for prediction, because when you have three or four elements in hand, you don't have to be a genius to reach certain conclusions.

It's the job of intellectuals and writers to cast doubt on perfection.

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.

There are some fundamental values it's impossible to be wrong about.

As a writer, I've always been interested in others.

It's very useful when politicians have doubts because there are so many choices to be made in the world.

Doubts are like stains on a shirt. I like shirts with stains, because when I'm given a shirt that's too clean, one that's completely white, I immediately start having doubts.

I don't go for people who lead full and satisfying lives.

Philosophy appears to concern itself only with the truth, but perhaps expresses only fantasies, while literature appears to concern itself only with fantasies, but perhaps it expresses the truth.

A l'intérieur de ce corps vivait l'âme d'une intellectuelle et poète dont personne n'avait le soupçon. Within this body lived the soul of an intellectual and poet, which nobody had suspected.

personally I don't trust literature that soothes people's consciences.

History is a big word..........History is not the sort of animal you can domesticate.

My books are about losers, about people who've lost their way and are engaged in a search.

Rather than regret for what I have written, I feel regret for what I shall never be able to read.