Ismail Kadare Quotes

It's exciting to watch people do and write and say what they feel like doing, writing and saying.

When I started to write, it was the '70s, and throughout that decade, we didn't have any problems with book challenges or censorship.

I feel you should be able to write about whatever you want.

I am a writer. It's like a third arm to me.

Writing is really freeing because it's the only part of the process where it's just you and the characters and you are by yourself in a room and you can just hash it out. There are no limitations.

Poetry is a break for freedom.

Literature is doomed if liberty of thought perishes.

And I wrote my way out of the labyrinth.

Like to write? Of course, of course I do. I seem to live while I write - it is life, for me.

If it is permissible to write plays that are not intended to be seen, I should like to see who can prevent me from writing a book no one can read.

I need you to do more than survive. As writers, as revolutionaries, tell the truth, your truth in your own way. Do not buy into their system of censorship, imagining that if you drop this character or hide that emotion, you can slide through their blockades. Do not eat your heart out in the hope of pleasing them.

The idea you can tell a writer of a specific religion to stop writing about that religion is presumptuous.

I need you to do more than survive. As writers, as revolutionaries, tell the truth, your truth in your own way.

I thought, if I write a book that is not a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, it's not going to mean that I will not get any criticism. I might as well write the book that I want to write.

Freedom is...the right to write the wrong words.

The thing that made me turn more towards writing was realizing how hard it was going to be to get a singular vision on film and how much more control I would have if I were writing novels.

Write words you’re willing to burn at the stake for. Write words you’d believe in even if the rest of the world didn’t.

I prefer to write and draw in the privacy of my home and with total freedom and then take it to the lion's den.

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself.

The dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he’s given the freedom to starve anywhere.

I like the fact that I can go away and lose myself so I don't have to live in the world of courage that everyone else does. I like creating, it's what I do, and acting allows me to stretch all those different muscles in all kinds of ways. That's pretty cool.

Writing has to do with truth-telling. When you're writing, let's say, an essay for a magazine, you try to tell the truth at every moment. You do your best to quote people accurately and get everything right. Writing a novel is a break from that: freedom. When you're writing a novel, you are in charge; you can beef things up.

So okay - there you are in your room with the shade down and the door shut and the plug pulled out of the base of the telephone. You've blown up your TV and committed yourself to a thousand words a day, come hell or high water. Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want.

Don't worry about what you're writing or whether it's good or even whether it makes sense.

It's an enormous relief to go to work and be an actor and not be worried about writing.