Nathalie Sarraute Quotations

Television has lifted the manufacture of banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry.

It's a question of not copying the masters, to look for something, good or bad, for oneself. To enter this liberated state of mind, one cannot copy the others.

Suspicion is one of the morbid reactions by which an organism defends itself and seeks another equilibrium.

The act of writing is a kind of catharsis, a liberation, but I never really concerned myself with that. I write because it interests me.

The reader has to be creative when he's reading. He has to try to make the thing alive. A good reader has to do a certain amount of work when he is reading.

One can't write for all readers. A poet cannot write for people who don't like poetry.

One can't write without having read - you have to read before beginning to write - and universities offer a very good opportunity to read.

Women have seen that they have locked themselves up with feminist writing.

I have never sought the reason why I write.

The novel moves like all the arts. It's transforming itself all the time.

Those who live in a world of human beings can only retrace their steps.

I don't admire Freud as much as some people do. Imagine Shakespeare being aware of the Oedipal complex when he wrote Hamlet. It would have been a disaster.

All psychological research is completely barred by the interpretations of the psychoanalysts. Everything happens in the unconscious, and I don't know what this unconscious is.

I have often heard that the novel is dead. But I see novels produced, I don't know how many a week, in France. I have the impression it's carrying along quite well.

It's the duty of all novelists, all painters, all musicians, all people who try to make art move: to look for something they feel authentically, without paying attention to styles.

Literature is always trying to show other parts of this immense universe in which we live. It's endless. I'm sure there will be other writers who will discover new worlds.

One can't write without having read-you have to read before beginning to write-and universities offer a very good opportunity to read.

Chacun peut e prouver en soi ce double mouvement: de s ir de s'inte grer a' la socie te , besoin de se re aliser par soi-me" me en dehors d'elle. We all have this double impulse within ourselves: the desire to integrate into society, and the need to fulfil ourselves outside of it, through our own efforts.

Neither reproaches nor encouragements are able to revive a faith that is waning.

For me, the poetry in a work is that which makes visible the invisible.

Le mot 'psychologie'est un de ceux qu'aucun auteur d'aujourd'hui ne peut entendre prononcer a' son sujet sans baisser les yeux et rougir. The word 'psychology' is one that no author today can hear said about her work without lowering her eyes and blushing.

Poetry is what makes the invisible appear.

We're swallowed up only when we are willing for it to happen.

I don't for a minute think that Hitler is like Joan of Arc. But I think that at that deep level of tropisms, Hitler or Stalin must have experienced the same tropisms as anyone else.