Ismail Kadaré Quotes

If an animal has to be sacrificed when a new bridge is built, what will it take to build a whole new world?

It was only a phrase that went from mouth to mouth and was never quite swallowed.

The days were heavy and sticky. All identical, one the same as the other. Soon they would even get rid of their one remaining distinction, the shell of their names: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday.

Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible... The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship.

And everything would be different, different.

The writer is always to some extent in exile, wherever he is, because he is somehow outside, separated from others; there is always a distance.

A mountaineer’s house, before being his home and the home of his family, is the home of God and of guests.

Shiny musical instruments wailed, their mouths open like lilies.

Winter hurled more wind and rain at the city than it ever had before. Clouds dashed about in all directions emptying their thunder, hail and rain. The horizon was choked in fog.

Can a country's people be better than its planes?

Can one move an empire as if it were a house?