Top 35 Antonio Tabucchi Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “La smetta di frequentare il passato, cerchi di frequentare il futuro.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

2. “Xenophobia manifests itself especially against civilizations and cultures that are weak because they lack economic resources, means of subsistence or land. So nomadic people are the first targets of this kind of aggression.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

3. “I prefer insomnia to anaesthesia.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

4. “It’s the job of intellectuals and writers to cast doubt on perfection.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

5. “I claim the right to take a stand once in a while.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

6. “No me deje en manos de personas llenas de certezas, son gente terrible.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

7. “The salt of any interesting civilization is mixture.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

8. “Doubts are like stains on a shirt. I like shirts with stains, because when I’m given a shirt that’s too clean, one that’s completely white, I immediately start having doubts.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

9. “I vividly remember the stories my grandfather told me about the carnage of the First World War, which people tend to forget was one of the worst massacres in human history.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

10. “I don’t have any doubts either about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Perhaps some more should be added to the list, but I don’t have the slightest doubt about human rights.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

11. “But democracy isn’t a state of perfection. It has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

12. “No, I’m happy to go on living the life I’ve chosen. I’m a university teacher and I like my job.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

13. “People with lots of doubts sometimes find life more oppressive and exhausting than others, but they’re more energetic – they aren’t robots.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

14. “I live quietly at home among my family and friends.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

15. “Philosophy appears to concern itself only with the truth, but perhaps expresses only fantasies, while literature appears to concern itself only with fantasies, but perhaps it expresses the truth.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

16. “I’ve come to realize one thing, that stories are always bigger than we are, they happen to us and we are their protagonists without realizing it, but in the stories we live, we aren’t the true protagonists, the true protagonist is the story itself.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

17. “I’ve always been drawn to tormented people full of contradictions.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

18. “Literature is my life of course, but from an ontological point of view. From an existential point of view, I like being a teacher.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

19. “Literature for me isn’t a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

20. “As a writer, I’ve always been interested in others.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

21. “It’s very useful when politicians have doubts because there are so many choices to be made in the world.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

22. “Rather than regret for what I have written, I feel regret for what I shall never be able to read.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

23. “An intellectual is going to have doubts, for example, about a fundamentalist religious doctrine that admits no doubt, about an imposed political system that allows no doubt, about a perfect aesthetic that has no room for doubt.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

24. “I don’t go for people who lead full and satisfying lives.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

25. “There are some fundamental values it’s impossible to be wrong about.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

26. “The most important basis of any novel is wanting to be someone else, and this means creating a character.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

27. “But I don’t think I have any particular talent for prediction, because when you have three or four elements in hand, you don’t have to be a genius to reach certain conclusions.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

28. “Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

29. “I was born in the Second World War during the Nazi invasion of my country.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

30. “In a novel, my feelings and sense of outrage can find a broader means of expression which would be more symbolic and applicable to many European countries.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

31. “Eco sees the intellectual as an organizer of culture, someone who can run a magazine or a museum. An administrator, in fact. I think this is a melancholy situation for an intellectual.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

32. “I don’t want to promote my own image either. I don’t like going on television or mixing in literary circles.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

33. “My job is to look at what politics is doing, not be a politician myself.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

34. “My books are about losers, about people who’ve lost their way and are engaged in a search.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

35. “Listen, my dear, she said, this can’t go on, you can’t live in two worlds at once, in the world of reality and the world of dreams, that kind of thing leads to hallucinations, you’re like a sleepwalker walking through a landscape with your arms outstretched, and everything you touch becomes part of your dream, even me, a fat old woman weighing one hundred seventy-five, I can feel myself dissolving into the air at the touch of your hand, as if I was becoming part of your dream too.”

— Antonio Tabucchi

36. “Convocando a la Literatura para que supla aquello que se ha perdido.”

— Antonio Tabucchi