Ismail Kadare > Quotes

“It was only a phrase that went from mouth to mouth and was never quite swallowed.”
― Ismail Kadare, Broken April

“If an animal has to be sacrificed when a new bridge is built, what will it take to build a whole new world?”
― Ismail Kadare, Chronicle in Stone

“And everything would be different, different.”
― Ismail Kadare, Broken April

“To tell the truth, this was one of the few cases in which she had not told him just what she was thinking. Usually, she let him know whatever thoughts happened to come to her, and indeed he never took it amiss if she let slip a word that might pain him, because when all was said and done that was the price one paid for sincerity.”
― Ismail Kadare, Broken April

“Who in the world has not yearned for a loved one, has never said, If only he or she could come back just once, just one more time...? Despite the fact that it can never happen, never ever. Surely this is the saddest thing about our mortal world, and its sadness will go on shrouding human life like a blanket of fog until its final extinction.”
― Ismail Kadare, The Ghost Rider

“I couldn't get to sleep. The book lay nearby. A thin object on the divan. So strange. Between two cardboard covers were noises, doors, howls, horses, people. All side by side, pressed tightly against one another. Boiled down to little black marks. Hair, eyes, voices, nails, legs, knocks on doors, walls, blood, beards, the sound of horseshoes, shouts. All docile, blindly obedient to the little black marks. The letters run in mad haste, now here, now there. The a's, f's, y's, k's all run. They gather together to create a horse or a hailstorm. They run again. Now they create a dagger, a night, a murder. Then streets, slamming doors, silence. Running and running. Never stopping.”
― Ismail Kadare, Chronicle in Stone

“The days were heavy and sticky. All identical, one the same as the other. Soon they would even get rid of their one remaining distinction, the shell of their names: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday.”
― Ismail Kadare, Chronicle in Stone

“Ishte teper e veshtire te futeshe brenda zemres saj.Ishte plot mure te larta akulli dhe rrethuar me mosbesim.Por nese arrije te futeshe,nuk dilje kurre prej aty.”
― 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.”
― Ismail Kadare

“Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible... The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship.”
― Ismail Kadare

“Can one move an empire as if it were a house?”
― Ismail Kadare, Elegy for Kosovo

“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.”
― Ismail Kadare, The Palace Of Dreams

“I could not understand how people could not like something as beautiful as the aerodrome. But I had lately become convinced that in general people were pretty boring. They liked to moan for hours on end about how hard it was to make ends meet, about the money they owed, the price of food, and other similar worries, but the minute some more brilliant or attractive subject come up, they were struck deaf.”
― Ismail Kadare, Chronicle in Stone

“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.”
― Ismail Kadare, Broken April

“Winter hurled more wind and rain at the city than it ever had before. Clouds dashed about in all directions emptying their thunder, hail and rain. The horizon was choked in fog.”
― Ismail Kadare, Chronicle in Stone

“Can a country's people be better than its planes?”
― Ismail Kadare, Chronicle in Stone

“Shiny musical instruments wailed, their mouths open like lilies.”
― Ismail Kadare, Chronicle in Stone

“Në rruget e tjera dëgjoheshin aty-këtu britma fatkëqijsh, që i zvarrisnin për flokësh, per t'i çuar në Degë. Fajësoheshin se gjatë mitingut të përmortshëm, në vend që të qanin a, së paku, të psherëtinin, kishin qeshur e, ndonëse ata bënin be e rrufe se s'kishin qeshur aspak e, përkundrazi, kishin qenë të vrarë në shpirt si të gjithë, por që as vet s'e dinin pse, e qara befas u qe kthyer në ngërdheshje, madje, shtonin se s'ishte hera e parë që u ndodhte kjo, askush nuk i besonte e, në vend t'i dëgjonin, i godisnin më fort.”
― Ismail Kadare, Darka e gabuar

“I lodhur nga medyshjet e linte nganjehere veten te binte ne enderrime pa kuptim. Mendonte se sa mire do te ishte sikur pas shtatorit, te vinte jo tetori me nentorin, por korriku me gushtin. Enderronte nje ere te marre qe te mund te ngaterronte muajt e stinet e vitit, ashtu si era e vjeshtes gjethet e thara.”
― Ismail Kadaré, The Castle

“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.”
― Ismail Kadare, Chronicle in Stone

“An Albanian’s house is the dwelling of God and the guest.’ Of God and the guest, you see. So before it is the house of its master, it is the house of one’s guest. The guest, in an Albanian’s life, represents the supreme ethical category, more important than blood relations. One may pardon the man who spills the blood of one’s father or of one’s son, but never the blood of a guest.”
― Ismail Kadaré, Broken April

“Ne raste te tilla, ajo behej mjaft e bukur. Syte, qe gjer atehere kishin ndjekur tymin e cigares, i dritesoheshin mallengjyeshem. Mollezat, gjithashtu. I binte ne ato caste nje hir qe te trembte,te rrezonte.
Te rrezonte? C'do te thoshte kjo?
Nuk di ta shpjegoj. Desha te them, nje bukuri qe te kepuste ne mes, sic i thone fjales. Ai, gjithashtu dukej sikur permendej. Porosiste nje whiskey tjeter. Pastaj vazhdonin te flisnin prape ne gjuhen e tyre, gjer pas mesnates, atehere kur ngriheshin per t'u ngjitur me lart, ne kat.”
― Ismail Kadaré, The Accident

“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.”
― Ismail Kadare, Elegy for Kosovo

“Who can say it’s not what we see with our eyes open that is distorted, and that what’s described here isn’t the true essence of things?” He slowed down outside a door. “Haven’t you ever heard old men sigh that life’s a dream?”
― Ismail Kadaré, The Palace Of Dreams

“Some people,” the Vizier went on, “think it’s the world of anxieties and dreams – your world, in short – that governs this one. I myself think it’s from this world that everything is governed. I think it’s this world that chooses the dreams and anxieties and imaginings that ought to be brought to the surface, as a bucket draws water from a well. Do you see what I mean? It’s this world that selects what it wants from the abyss.”
― Ismail Kadaré, The Palace Of Dreams

“E ke menduar se po te largohesh kaq shume nga jeta njerezore, nga ajo qe ti me perbuzje e quan "malli i jetes", mund te percudnohesh kaq shume, saqe, po te duash te kthehesh prape, ajo s'ka per te te pranuar me, ashtu sic eshte e papranueshme nje fantazme? Gjepura kishte thene Kramsi, fjaleri mikroborgjeze, kurse tjetri kishte vazhduar: nje hije, ja c'je ti Krams.”
― Ismail Kadaré, The Concert

“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.”
― Ismail Kadare, Broken April

“(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.)”
― Ismail Kadare, Chronicle in Stone

“Poetry

Poetry,
How did you find your way to me?
My mother does not know Albanian well,
She writes letters like Aragon, without commas and periods,
My father roamed the seas in his youth,
But you have come,
Walking down the pavement of my quiet city of stone,
And knocked timidly at the door of my three-storey house,
At Number 16.

There are many things I have loved and hated in life,
For many a problem I have been an 'open city',
But anyway...
Like a young man returning home late at night,
Exhausted and broken by his nocturnal wanderings,
Here too am I, returning to you,
Worn out after another escapade.

And you,
Not holding my infidelity against me,
Stroke my hair tenderly,
My last stop,
Poetry.”
― Ismail Kadare

“The government can catch a hare with an oxcart!”
― Ismail Kadaré, The Palace of Dreams