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Kindle Notes & Highlights
“People always think that writing a novel begins with an idea. But a novel begins most of all with a desire: the desire to write. A desire that grabs you and that nothing can stop, a desire so strong that you turn your back on everything else. That perpetual desire to write, I call the writer’s sickness. You can have the best plot
The magic of the novel is that even a simple fact, any fact, when presented as a series of questions, opens the door to a story.”
“Because laughter is the strongest feeling of all, stronger than love and passion. Laughter is a form of perfection. We never regret it; we always experience it fully. When it’s over, we’re always satisfied—we want it to go on but we do not ask for more. Even the memory of laughter is pleasant.”
“According to Bernard, a great novel is a painting—a world offered to the reader who allows herself to be wrapped up in the immense illusion created by the author’s brushstrokes. The picture shows rain: you feel wet. A cold, snow-covered landscape? You start to shiver. Bernard would say, ‘You know what a great writer is? A painter. In the museum of great writers, to which all bookstores have a key, thousands of paintings await you. If you enter once, you’ll keep going back.’”
Life is a novel whose conclusion we already know: in the end, the hero dies. The most important thing is not how our story ends, but how we fill the pages. For life, like a novel, must be an adventure. And adventures are life’s vacations.
