Liv Ullmann Quotes

I do not hesitate to read. all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable-any real insight or broad human sentiment.

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.

On the day of the show, I sit down with someone that speaks very good English and someone who speaks the local language very well and work out what I'm going to say.

I speak English and Spanish. I write in Spanish; my books are published in English.

I'm a professor of comparative literature, among other things, so I'm able to read in a couple of other languages, and I understand that not everyone is, not everyone can, although it is quite stunning how many people do read Spanish in the United States, but moving between languages is also extremely helpful.

I am the only British writer who writes in Spanish.

Translation makes me look at how a poem is put together in a different way, without the personal investment of the poem I'm writing myself, but equally closely technically.

People who grow up with two or more languages understand that each can express certain aspects of reality better than the other.

I could never see a book written in a foreign language without the most ardent desire to read it.

For the benefit of those who are not bilingual, I will now continue in English.

I write my novels in English first; then they are translated into Turkish by professional translators. Then I take their translation and rewrite. So basically, I write the same novel twice.

I speak Vietnamese and conversational Spanish.

I come from a family of linguists. My maternal grandparents have been authors and translators.

I've been working in three-four languages. I'm happy to do it.

Having translated two plays by Chekhov, and not speaking Russian myself - I cannot say one sentence. This may shock people... However, I am not shocked, as it is not hard to find out what the words mean.

I think two different people can read one of my books and come away with completely different opinions on the subject. I hope they just read from the beginning to the end and be made to think about the subject. Then they can come to their own conclusions.

When I first moved up to San Francisco to write Where The Wild Things Are, I had a couple moments where I talked to somebody, and they're like, "Oh, I love that book. I love this part of it," or, "This is what it means to me." And it's like, "Well, I don't know. I guess that's not what I'm making the movie about." But very early on, I don't know, we sort of let go of that fear.

To create is to relate. We trust in the artist in everybody to make his own connections, his own juxtapositions.

A friend of mine who writes history books said to me that he thought that the two creatures most to be pitied were the spider and the novelist - their lives hanging by a thread spun out of their own guts. But in some ways I think writers of fiction are the creatures most to be envied, because who else besides the spider is allowed to take that fragile thread and weave it into a pattern? What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it to create some semblance of order.

I don't think you need to be so result-oriented when you're trying to define the success of an art work. I think we can allow some unpredictability.

I read the book and I think, "Well, this is the movie we're going to make," and then someone else reads it, and they take a completely different movie from it. And both are valid.

My book would come out in one language, then it would come out in another language, then it would come out in One City, One Read, and I was always being called away from my desk.

Never trust the translation or interpretation of something without first trusting its interpreter.

I just enjoy translating, it's like opening one's mouth and hearing someone else's voice emerge.

It was our goal to dig into the characters and really try to find out why they think the things they think and why they do the things they do - and we got some amazingly candid and revealing interviews - but it's not my job to offer summary judgment on those interpretations.