Quotes from Tim Parks

Any time one seeks to produce for a larger public one inevitably has to drop material that would only be understood by a particular group.

Beneath all the chatter and the liturgy runs a fierce nostalgia for the literary myths of the past, for the gigantic figures of Dickens and Joyce, Hemingway and Faulkner. A writer can't even aim at that kind of aura today. But it's that yearning for imagined greatness that drives the whole literary enterprise. Plus the publishers' desperation to manufacture a bestseller to pay the bills. The idea of greatness is a marketing tool. See Franzen.

We knocked lightly on the door. A voice asked who we might be, for nobody will ever open in Italy until identity is declared. Security, even in the remotest villages, is at New York standards.

the glass of wine I've drunk is beginning to take a few corners off the world...

Indeed, we had caused some surprise by having a child not only while renting, but while renting in precarious circumstances, in furnished property, and without the proper contract and strict rent control enjoyed by most tenants.

The train station is the ideal scenario for greetings and farewells. The car is too banal. What does it mean to set off in a car? Nothing. The airport is too exhausting and impersonal, the plane itself remote, unseen, the barriers and security disturbing. Here the powerful beast of the locomotive thrusts its nose under the great arch of the station.

Your son. From nought to five he is your master, from five to ten your servant, from ten to fifteen your secret counsellor, and after that, your friend - or your enemy.

Is it worth going into this admission process in just a little more detail? I think so, if only to appreciate the tendency the Italian authorities have of offering everybody a price (to endear themselves to the electorate) and then, since they can't actually afford to give it to everybody, setting up a maze, or obstacle race, to make sure that only those who really haggle for it (not those who need it) actually get it.

One takes great pleasure in seeing children acquire skills one does not have, seeing them become, thankfully, different from oneself.

One of the most characteristic Italian emotions, it seems to me, is that mixture of envy, perplexity and wonder that comes when one realises that others are working the system far more effectively than oneself - said com'è? - this together with the knowledge that they are doing so and will continue to do so with absolute impunity. Until it dawns on you that the system was invented in order to be worked in this way.

Everywhere the culture reproduces itself, reflects itself, as in a hall of mirrors - the landscape, the language, the currency, all bouncing off each other, recreating each other - and in the midst of those mirrors, both reflected and projecting, stands the child, discovering himself in these castle walls, these terraced hills, the liquid words he speaks, and now in this coloured paper, too.

So Michele and Stefi's friends don't receive regular pocket monty, which is a very Anglo-Saxon, puritan thing, which its obsession with system and clarity, benefits and punishments, its perverse desire to have little children learn to manage given amounts of money over given periods of time.

What a beautiful respite a train journey is and a good book, too, and best of all the book on the train, in life and out of it at the same time, before we arrive at Termini and disembark and the book is put down and we must all part and go our separate ways, forever.

This process of interpretation, or sometimes misinterpretation, which has much to do with the expectations we bring to any given event, is one reason we might get the impression that there is a mismatch between perception and reality

For one invariable and distinguishing feature of all Italian regulations is that they are complicated.

You will only have copyright in a society that places a very high value on the individual, the individual intellect, the products of individual intellect.

We have too much respect for the printed word, too little awareness of the power words hold over us. We allow worlds to be conjured up for us with very little concern for the implications. We overlook glaring incongruities. We are suckers for alliteration, assonance, and rhythm. We rejoice over stories, whether fiction or "documentary," whose outcomes are flagrantly manipulative, self-serving, or both. Usually both.

Quando nasce un amore non si è mai a corto di argomenti.

MONOPOLIES, LIKE USURY, were illegal under Church law. Because unnatural. God had given the natural world to all mankind, not to a chosen few. Denying people liberty and keeping prices artificially high, monopolies were obviously a form of stealing and could only lead to perdition.

Whenever, in a democracy, we see our rulers obsessed with "the technical aspects" of the electoral process, whenever we see them tinkering with the size of constituencies, or machinery for counting ballots, then we know we are getting close to "the secret things of our town," the gap between respectable appearance and brutal reality.

Per così dire», iva. Mi piace questa parola, iva. Dev'essere sanscrito. Certe cose Calasso le sa. Davanti a tipi come lui che capiscono il sanscrito non puoi che restare a bocca aperta. In ogni caso, ben venga l'apologetico quando si è davanti all'approssimativo. O al titubante. O al decisamente arrischiato. Ogni traduzione dovrebbe avere iva in appendice.

Your ticket says via Pordenone," he told me. "Don't you read your documento di viaggio?" I was fascinated. What kind of man is it who imagines that when one buys a train ticket one then stops to read it?

Once, when the minibar boy saw me promptly dump my receipt in the ashtray, he warned me that I was legally obliged to retain it for the duration of my journey, as if it was a sort of ticket without which my digestive processes might be subject to sanction.

The canon is finished. Anyone who believes that one can construct a canon from the tidal wave of narrative produced today is guilty of wishful thinking. All we will have is a record of who won the prizes and achieved celebrity status. But, perhaps, the canon was always a fairly heavy-handed tool and little more than a convenience. The only thing is to follow one's nose and listen carefully to the way others talk about books, learn who's opinion takes you to interesting places.