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The novel as we knew it in the nineteenth century was killed off by Proust and Joyce.

Alberto Moravia

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Alberto Moravia
Age: 82 †
Born: 1907
Born: November 22
Died: 1990
Died: September 26
Author
Critic
Film Director
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Politician
Screenwriter
Writer
The Eternal City
Alberto Pincherle
Proust
Joyce
Nineteenth
Killed
Novel
Century
Knew

More quotes by Alberto Moravia

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I don't think it's possible to write a good novel around a negative personality.
Alberto Moravia
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Modern man-whether in the womb of the masses, or with his workmates, or with his family, or alone-can never for one moment forget that he is living in a world in which he is a means and whose end is not his business.
Alberto Moravia
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Yes, one uses what one knows, but autobiography means something else. I should never be able to write a real autobiography I always end by falsifying and fictionalizing—I’m a liar, in fact. That means I’m a novelist, after all. I write about what I know.
Alberto Moravia
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When you aren't sincere you need to pretend, and by pretending you end up believing yourself that's the basic principle of every faith.
Alberto Moravia
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An uncertain evil causes anxiety because, at the bottom of one's heart, one goes on hoping till the last moment that it may not be true a certain evil, on the other hand, instills, for a time, a kind of dreary tranquillity.
Alberto Moravia
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Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation in turn becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of our resources - and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance on in the future.
Alberto Moravia
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Every true writer is like a bird he repeats the same song, the same theme, all his life. For me, this theme as always been revolt.
Alberto Moravia
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Good writers are monotonous, like good composers. They keep trying to perfect the one problem they were born to understand.
Alberto Moravia
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This thought strengthened in me my belief that all men, without exception, deserve to be pitied, if only because they are alive.
Alberto Moravia
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In life there are no problems, that is, objective and external choices there is only the life which we do not resolve as a problem but which we live as an experience, whatever the final result may be.
Alberto Moravia
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You can't think on purpose about somebody or something. Either you think about them naturally or you don't think at all.
Alberto Moravia
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...my boredom might be described as a malady affecting external objects and consisting of a withering process an almost instantaneous loss of vitality--just as though one saw a flower change in a few seconds from a bud to decay and dust.
Alberto Moravia
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When I sit at my table to write, I never know what it's going to be until I'm under way. I trust in inspiration, which sometimes comes and sometimes doesn't. But I don't sit back waiting for it. I work every day.
Alberto Moravia
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I do not foresee a time when I shall feel that I have nothing to say.
Alberto Moravia
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Dictatorships are one-way streets. Democracy boasts two-way traffic.
Alberto Moravia
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I like to compare my method with that of painters centuries ago, proceeding from layer to layer.
Alberto Moravia
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It is what we are forced to do that forms our character, not what we do of our own free will.
Alberto Moravia
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A writer survives in spite of his beliefs.
Alberto Moravia
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The less one notices happiness, the greater it is.
Alberto Moravia
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The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write.
Alberto Moravia