Maria

“You know what happened with physics, at the beginning of the century? Everything began to be called into doubt. The fundamentals, I mean, the very most basic assumptions. It was like a building that creaks and groans and you have to go down to inspect the foundations. People began to be doing not physics but rather meditations on physics. [...]

The same sort of thing has happened in the novel. The foundations have had to be looked into. Which is no coincidence, because it was born at the birth of this Western civilization of ours, and it's followed the same arc, the same trajectory, right down to this moment of collapse. Is there a crisis in the novel or is it rather a novel of crisis? Both. One delves into its essence, its mission, its worth. But it's all been done so far from the outside. There've been attempts to carry out the same examination from within, but one would have to go deeper. A novel in which the novelist him- or herself is included. [...]

I'm not talking about the figure of the writer inside the fiction. I'm talking about the possibility of the extreme case, in which it's the author of the novel that's inside the novel. Not as an observer, though, or a chronicler, or a witness [but as] just another character, the same sort of character as all the rest, which however do come from the soul or spirit or anima of the author. The author would be a man maddened, somehow, and living with his own doubles, aspects of his own self.”
― Ernesto Sabato, Abaddón el Exterminador

“By the light of your premise, theme or subject precedes form. But as you make some progress with the writing, you'll see how the expression enriches, or reciprocally creates, the subject, until in the end it becomes impossible to separate them.”
― Ernesto Sábato, Abaddón el Exterminador

“Ο αέρας είχε πέσει λίγο, κι επειδή ξεπρόβαλε ένα κομμάτι του έναστρου ουρανού, έκανα τη σκέψη πως, μια κι ο θάνατος ήταν η μόνη διέξοδος στη στύση μου, αν η Σιμόν κι εγώ σκοτωνόμασταν, τη θέση του σύμπαντος του δικού μας προσωπικού οράματος, που εμείς δεν μπορούσαμε να τ' αντέξουμε, θα την έπαιρναν αναγκαστικά τα καθαρά άστρα που δεν έχουν καμιά σχέση με τα εξωτερικά βλέμματα και που θα πραγματοποιούσαν εν ψυχρώ, χωρίς τις καθυστερήσεις και τις υπεκφυγές των ανθρώπων, αυτό που εμένα μου φαίνεται πως είναι η κατάληξη των σεξουαλικών μου καταχρήσεων, δηλαδή μια πυράκτωση γεωμετρική (που, εκτός των άλλων, είναι και σημείο σύμπτωσης της ζωής και του θανάτου, του είναι και του μηδενός) κι απόλυτα αστραποβόλα.”
― Georges Bataille, Story of the Eye

“Even now - they'll never grow up - Japanese potters still play with accidents. Whether it arises from the clay, the wheel, the kiln or the glaze, they watch out for any irregularity and sometimes even emphasize it. In any case they use it as a starting point for a new adventure. The shape and colour may be perfectly classical, but spoiled by a scratch or being under- or over-fired. So they pursue and develop the flaw, struggling fiercely, lovingly with and against it until it becomes deliberate, an expression of themselves. If they succeed they're overjoyed: the result is modern. Never Tunisian. But not many Swiss bankers take up with Japanese potters.”
― Jean Genet, Prisoner of Love