Quotes from Ismail Kadare

Dhe nuk ka asgjë më të tmerrshme se ëndrrat e thyera. Ato i gjejmë përgjatë gjithë rrugës, duke na gjakosur jo këmbët me të cilat i shkelim, por zemrën me të cilën i deshëm.

Every passion or wicked thought, every affliction or crime, every rebellion or catastrophe necessarily casts its shadow before it long before it manifests itself in real life.

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

His suspicion that he was not going in the right direction tortmented him more and more. At last he had the conviction that he would never go anywhere but in the wrong direction, to the very end of the handful of days that was left to him, unhappy moonstruck pilgrim, whose April was to be cut off short.

Shiny musical instruments wailed, their mouths open like lilies.

Sunday had spread all over the city. It looked as if the sun had smacked into the earth and broken into pieces and chunks of wet light were scattered everywhere -- in the streets, on the window panes, on puddles and roofs. I remembered a day long ago when Grandmother had cleaned a big fish. Her forearms were splattered with shiny scales. It was as if she had Sunday in her whole body. When my father got angry, he had Tuesday.

This is how things come to pass in the world,' one of the princes is supposed to have said. 'Blood flows one way in life and another way in song, and one never knows which flow is the right one.

In our city spring came from the sky, not from the soil, which was ruled by stone that recognizes no seasonal change. The change of the season could be glimpsed in the thinning of clouds, the appearance of the birds and the occasional rainbow.)

Having left, for various reasons, the homeland of epic, they were uprooted like trees overthrown, they had lost their heroic character and deep-seated virtue.

Guidebooks used to write the name of my city in two ways: Gjirokaster in Albanian, and Argyrokastron for foreigners. The classical-sounding name somehow gave it better credentials, because people in the Balkans famously exaggerate and often call their villages cities.

I thought for a long time about leaving Albania, but at the same time to play a role in its life.