Quotes from Nathalie Sarraute

Poetry is what makes the invisible appear.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I have never sought the reason why I write.

I think it's very painful, and that it's better not to have any doubts. I envy those who don't have any; I envy them a lot. They are happy people.

je le sens très bien,mais je ne sais pas l'exprimer...je n'ai à ma disposition que de pauvres mots complètement usés à force d'avoir servi à tous et à tout...

And they talked and talked, repeating the same things, going over them, then going over them again, from one side then from the other, kneading and kneading them, continually rolling between their fingers this unsatisfactory, mean substance that they had extracted from their lives (what they called "life," their domain), kneading it, pulling it, rolling it until it ceased to form anything between their fingers but a little pile, a little gray pellet.

What I tried to do was to show certain inner "movements" by which I had long been attracted; in fact, I might even say that, ever since I was a child, these movements, which are hidden under the commonplace, harmless appearances of every instant of our lives, had struck and held my attention.

Un poète n'est pas, comme on le croit, celui qui sait mieux que d'autres regarder la terre et le ciel, écouter le bruit de la mer, le gazouillis des sources et des oiseaux, un poète, vous en serez un, mon petit ami - les pièces sonnent, elle salue bien bas - un poète, on l'a dit et c'est vrai, c'est celui qui sait fabriquer un poème avec des mots.

Bestaan is jezelf drinken zonder dorst.

She did not move. And about her the entire house, the street, seemed to encourage her, seemed to consider this motionlessness natural.

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.

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