Valeria Luiselli Quote

It is usually unbearably painful to read a book by an author who knows way less than you do, unless the book is a novel.

We are all born as storytellers. Our inner voice tells the first story we ever hear.

If you write then you are reborn because by writing about the moment, you can relive it for a second time.

All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers’ plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children’s games. We edge nearer death every tim...

Human stories are practically always about one thing, really, aren't they? Death. The inevitability of death. . .. . . (quoting an obituary) 'There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that ev...

Let us not take it for granted that life exists more in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.

Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights. What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative! Madeleine felt safe with a nine...

Then the front doorbell (already too long delayed by my rambling narrative) rang.

To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety tha...

When she smiles, the lines in her face become epic narratives that trace the stories of generations that no book can replace.