Quotes About Anticipation

A child's pleasure in listening to stories lies partly in waiting for things he expects to be repeated: situations, phrases, formulas. Just as in poems and songs the rhymes help to create the rhythm, so in prose narrative there are events that rhyme.

childhood boredom is a special kind of boredom. It is a boredom full of dreams, a sort of projection into another place, into another reality. In adulthood boredom is made of repetition, it is the continuation of something from which we are no longer expecting any surprise.

The facility of the entrance into another world is an illusion: you start writing in a rush, anticipating the happiness of a future reading, and the void yawns on the white page.

The moment that counts most for me is the one that precedes reading. At times a title is enough to kindle in me the desire for a book that perhaps does not exist.

I expect readers to read in my books something I didn't know, but I can expect it only from those who expect to read something they didn't know.

Try to foresee now everything that might make you interrupt your reading. Cigarettes within reach, if you smoke, and the ashtray. Anything else? Do you have to pee? All right, you know best.

But Ludmilla is always at least one step ahead of you. "I like to know that book exists that I will still be able to read…" she says, sure that existent objects, concrete albeit unknown, must correspond to the strength of her desire. How can you keep up with her, this woman who is always reading another book besides the one before her eyes, a book that does not yet exist, but which, since she wants it, cannot fail to exist?

Vuoto separazione e attesa, questo siamo.

Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be....

You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst.

Here in Turin you can write because past and future have greater prominence than the present, the force of past history and the anticipation of the future give a concreteness and sense to the discrete, ordered images of today. Turin is a city which entices the reader towards vigour, linearity, style. It encourages logic, and through logic it opens the way toward madness.

Dal raccontare al passato, e dal presente che m prendeva la mono nei tratti concitati, ecco, o futuro, sono salita in sella al tuo cavallo. Quali nuovi stendardi mi levi incontro dai pennoni delle torri di città non ancora fondate? quali fumi di devastazioni dai castelli e dai giardini che amavo? quali impreviste età dell'oro prepari, tu malpadroneggiato, tu foriero di tesori pagati a caro prezzo, tu mio regno da conquistare, futuro...

I like to know that books exist that I will still be able to read…" she says, sure that existent objects, concrete albeit unknown, must correspond to the strength of her desire. How can you keep up with her, this woman who is always reading another book besides the one before her eyes, a book that does not yet exist, but which, since she wants it, cannot fail to exist ?

Il momento che più conta per me è quello che precede la lettura. Alle volte è il titolo che basta ad accendere in me il desiderio d'un libro che forse non esiste. Alle volte è l'incipit del libro, le prime frasi...Insomma: se a voi basta poco per mettere in moto l'immaginazione, a me basta ancor meno: la promessa della lettura.

Leer es ir al encuentro de algo que está a punto de ser y aún nadie sabe qué será.

Come di tutte le cose, anche del viaggio la parte più bella era l'inizio. Partendo si correva via immediatamente liberi dal groviglio di affari e affarucci che gremivano la vita. Per un istante si respirava liberi.

We must rediscover the distinction between hope and expectation.

At the moment of death I hope to be surprised.

Tako obi?no biva. Oni koje želimo da vidimo ne dolaze u ?asovima kad na njih mislimo i kad ih najviše o?ekujemo, a pojavljuju se u nekom trenutku kad smo mislima najdalje od njih. I našoj radosti zbog ponovnog vi?enja tada treba malo vremena da se digne s dna, gde je potisnuta, i pojavi na površini.

S?uchaj, jak si? czas zbli?a, i daj mu nadej??.

Withholding things in a story is no good if you aren't building to something substantial. It becomes foreplay without the main event, and no one wants that.

When I was a kid going into the movies, you weren't force-fed information everywhere you looked about what the movie was going to be.

It is a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up.

We re-live past events and re-feel their pain, and we pre-live future disasters and so pre-feel their impact.