Quotes from Manuel Puig

In film, you can't go into analytical explorations because the audience will reject that.

I had stories that needed more space than the hour and a half or two hours a movie gives you.

Ironically, Latin American countries, in their instability, give writers and intellectuals the hope that they are needed.

Writers are not meant for action.

For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free.

I'm not a best-seller, but through translations, I've accumulated some money.

The translator's task is to create, in his or her own language, the same tensions appearing in the original. That's hard!

Teaching is a good distraction, and I am in contact with young people, which is very gratifying.

I've never seen a worse situation than that of young writers in the United States. The publishing business in North America is so commercialized.

I am very interested in what has been called bad taste. I believe the fear of displaying a soi-disant bad taste stops us from venturing into special cultural zones.

If a spectator with a philosophical mind, somebody accustomed to reading books, gets the same kind of information in a movie, he might not fully understand it.

It's my own personal unconscious that ultimately creates the novel's aesthetic facade.

If the novelist shares his or her problems with the characters, he or she is able to study his personal unconscious.

Being a man (male "macho") does not give you right to anything.

I'm not terribly happy about rock and roll. Certain rock music is uninspiring, numbing; it makes you feel like an idiot.

I don't think humor is forced upon my universe; it's a part of it.

The writer needs to react to his or her own internal universe, to his or her own point of view. If he or she doesn't have a personal point of view, it's impossible to be a creator.

I began teaching in New York because I needed to stay in the United States and didn't have my immigration papers in order, so working for a university was a way of resolving the issue.

I write novels because there is something I don't understand in reality.

I have written every one of my novels to convince somebody of something.

What's better, a poetic intuition or an intellectual work? I think they complement each other.

I locate that special problem in a character and then try to understand it. That's the genesis of all my work.

Book reviews have never helped me. Most of them erred in their interpretations and their work has been a waste of time.

The essayist has to follow a certain intellectual pattern. The novelist has the advantage of using fantasy, of being subjective.