Friedrich Schleiermacher Quotes

A translator is to be like his author; it is not his business to excel him.

I'm a big reader, so I tend to already know the books when they're adapted into something.

Culture isn't all just about what can be tweaked and twitched in the simplest possible way. As people move around, they literally don't see what's around them, because they're wedded to earworms that are burrowing into their heads endlessly in a kind of negotiation with these tiny screens.

I moved from Italy to Oregon in the '80s - sort of like moving to the middle of a "Duck Dynasty" episode, which was massive culture shock to say the least.

If you move here from somewhere else, I often think if I move to Germany, for example, or if I move China and I go worship there I will understand and I'll be willing to give up a lot of my culture because I'm in somebody else's homeland. So I'm going to have to act German or Chinese, whatever that might mean.

I don't speak any languages well enough to make an expert assessment on writing in translation, but since I'm interested in awkwardness in prose, I find I like the way translated texts can sometimes acquire awkwardness in the process of translation. There's a discordance translation can create which I think is sometimes seen as a weakness but which I think can be a really interesting aspect of the text.

It's up to the reader to decipher the code, or the words, based on everything they know about life and emotions.

No man can really succeed if he doesn't move away from where he was born. I believe it is particularly true for the writer.

In novels and autobiographies, the first positive move that the immigrant makes towards assimilation is to buy himself a suit of city clothes.

Born often under another sky, placed in the middle of an always moving scene, himself driven by the irresistible torrent which draws all about him, the American has no time to tie himself to anything, he grows accustomed only to change, and ends by regarding it as the natural state of man. He feels the need of it, more he loves it; for the instability; instead of meaning disaster to him, seems to give birth only to miracles all about him.

When I get to China, I will have no claim on any one for anything. My claim will be alone in God and I must learn before I leave England to move men through God by prayer alone.

Always leave room for the reader to supply meanings.

The thing is, I moved tons. I was in like nine schools by ninth grade, so I moved a ton of times when I was younger. As hard as that was growing up, it helped me in so many ways being an actress, because every year I was constantly changing who I was. I could be someone new. I wouldn't care if people judged me or didn't like me because, in the end, I knew I was probably going to move in a few months anyway.

It was always clear to me that I would have to earn my readers, some I would have to find, some to create.

Of course my books are translated into many languages. I have here, in my home, translations on my shelf of my books into forty-five different languages. Almost none of them I can read. I can read only the English editions. But, I know that a translation of a work of literature is like playing a violin concerto on the piano. You can do this. You can do this very successfully on one strict condition: never try to force the piano to produce the sounds of the violin. This will be grotesque. So, different musical instruments provide for different music.

Read anything I write for the pleasure of reading it. Whatever else you find will be the measure of what you brought to the reading.

A letter is a risky thing; the writer gambles on the reader's frame of mind.

The object we call a book is not the real book, but its potential, like a musical score or seed. It exists fully only in the act of being read; and its real home is inside the head of the reader, where the symphony resounds, the seed germinates. A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.

Literature belongs first and foremost to the language in which it is being written. The very same book, even if it is translated very accurately, let's say from Hebrew into English or from English into Hebrew, becomes a different book because language is a musical instrument.

I understand that and I have had very candid discussions with Saudi leaders in the past. I respect their culture and their heritage and their traditions, but I think that they now, as they move forward, will have to start examining these traditions and these practices to see whether or not change is appropriate.

In literature, you know only what you imagine

In terms of writing, I think what most fiction writers treasure more than anything is the feeling that they're living for the length of a book inside another person.

Few authors understand themselves, and a proper reader must not only understand his author but also be able to see beyond him.

Nothing which is harmonized by the bond of the Muse can be changed from its own to another language without destroying its sweetness

Writer's make national literature, while translators make universal literature.