Mark Polizzotti > Quotes

“Every translator’s origin story seems to involve a measure of serendipity, and mine is no exception.”
― Mark Polizzotti, Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto

“Translation is like any art: in the best of cases, it helps shed light on ourselves, on those hidden corners of ourselves that we barely knew existed, and whose discovery has enriched us. It exposes us to minds and voices able to awaken in us a particular sense of delight, an irreplaceable thrill of discovery that is avail- able nowhere else. The ability of these minds and voices to do this is unique, not because they come from a foreign land—or at least, not solely because of it—but because they are sui generis, as exceptional in their own culture as they appear in ours.”
― Mark Polizzotti

“A good ten years before the fact, Dylan was already out-punking Johnny Rotten.”
― Mark Polizzotti, Highway 61 Revisited

“Everything has been stripped away. You’re on your own, you’re free now… You’re so helpless, and now you’ve got nothing left. And you’re invisible—you’ve got no secrets—that’s so liberating. You’ve nothing to fear anymore.”31 It is this sense of release—from possessions, from expectations, from societal demands—that lifts the song above just character demolition, and that no doubt accounts for much of its enduring popularity.”
― Mark Polizzotti, Highway 61 Revisited

“And as Dylan keeps reminding us, he not busy being born, and then reborn, is busy dying.”
― Mark Polizzotti, Highway 61 Revisited

“Tom Thumb’s Blues” paints a picture of bluffing and loss, of being in over your head, of fearing that you can never return home. When one has strayed so far away from the road, the only recourse is to go all the way back, as north and east as Juarez is south and west. “I’m going back to New York City, I do believe I’ve had enough,”
― Mark Polizzotti, Highway 61 Revisited

“I should mention is that, because I don’t live off my translation work, I have the luxury of taking on only those projects that appeal to me - or, more accurately, projects that I connect with, to which I feel I can do justice. If I don’t feel I can give a text my best effort or that I can put myself in the skin of the writing, then my impulse is to turn it down. It wouldn’t be fair to the book, the author, or the reader for me to translate it under those conditions.”
― Mark Polizzotti

“In these Dysfunctional States of America, the Know-Nothings are the ruling party, and mediocrity its own reward.”
― Mark Polizzotti, Highway 61 Revisited