All Harry Mathews Quotes
- And then, when I left Princeton in the middle of my sophomore year, I went into the navy. Into
- After the navy, I transferred to Harvard and finished there. I was there the spring term of 1951 and I stayed through the summer term… Able
- It's true, I had an extremely delicious life, but that was my life at home, and perhaps because I was only a child, or for… Boy
- You make something. You give up expressing and start inventing. Expressing
- There are many things I’ve written that I didn’t really understand until a long time later. Didn
- Write about the things that attract you. Choose your subjects the way you used to choose your toys: out of desire. Attract
- Translation is the paradigm, the exemplar of all writing.... It is translation that demonstrates most vividly the yearning for transformation that underlies every act involving… Act
- What I said about John was that he liberated me from my anxieties about writing in a correct, acceptable way. Acceptable
- I'd been brought up on the Upper East Side in a WASP society, which was death on crutches. Been
- My idea was to go to Vienna to study conducting and perhaps play in an orchestra first, so I thought before I got to Vienna… Conducting
- Syntax and vocabulary are overwhelming constraints --the rules that run us. Language is using us to talk --we think we're using the language, but language… Agents
- I graduated in 1952 and went to Europe, with Niki and our first child Laura, who was then a year old. Child
- I left Princeton, but I graduated Harvard, in 1952. Graduated
- I think situations are more important than plot and character. Character
- I was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, for a while, about which the less said the better, and then I was in the Mediterranean, about which… Better
- Music had been my first love among the arts, and I was fascinated by it, as I still am. Among
- I also had this mistaken dream, fantasy really - perhaps because I'm good at languages - of being able in both Italy and France to… Able
- My dream, I remember, when I went to boarding school, was to have a study all my own, a little nook someplace where nobody could… All
- When Niki and I moved to Paris, there was also the challenge of Paris, an extremely daunting city. Challenge
- Well, my relationship to America at the time I left was very limited. America
- Well, I had this little notion - I started writing when I was eleven, writing poetry. I was passionately addicted to it; it was my… Addicted
- I was immediately smitten with an attraction to this culture, not in the sense of high culture but of the basic way people behaved towards… Attraction
- I thought Cheever was magnificent and that if I could write like him that would be the best I could do. And then I realized… Best
- And I finished college because I thought how much it would upset my parents if I didn't. College
- It has always been something I could do, and it may seem odd that in my case I seem to create an interesting narrative and… Been