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Top 15 Tim Parks Quotes (2025 Update)

Tim Parks Quote: “But now suddenly it occurs to me that by far the main protagonist of twentieth-century literature must be the chattering mind, which usually means the mind that can’t make up its mind, the mind postponing action in indecision and, if we’re lucky, poetry.”

1. “But now suddenly it occurs to me that by far the main protagonist of twentieth-century literature must be the chattering mind, which usually means the mind that can’t make up its mind, the mind postponing action in indecision and, if we’re lucky, poetry.”

Tim Parks Quote: “Glory, for the translator, is borrowed glory. There is no way around this. Translators are celebrated when they translate celebrated books.”

2. “Glory, for the translator, is borrowed glory. There is no way around this. Translators are celebrated when they translate celebrated books.”

Tim Parks Quote: “The canon is finished. Anyone who believes that one can construct a canon from the tidal wave of narrative produced today is guilty of wishful thinking. All we will have is a record of who won the prizes and achieved celebrity status. But, perhaps, the canon was always a fairly heavy-handed tool and little more than a convenience. The only thing is to follow one’s nose and listen carefully to the way others talk about books, learn who’s opinion takes you to interesting places.”

3. “The canon is finished. Anyone who believes that one can construct a canon from the tidal wave of narrative produced today is guilty of wishful thinking. All we will have is a record of who won the prizes and achieved celebrity status. But, perhaps, the canon was always a fairly heavy-handed tool and little more than a convenience. The only thing is to follow one’s nose and listen carefully to the way others talk about books, learn who’s opinion takes you to interesting places.”

Tim Parks Quote: “But perhaps the greatest escapism of all is to take refuge in the domesticity of the past, the home that history and literature become, avoiding the one moment of time in which we are not at home, yet have to live: the present.”

4. “But perhaps the greatest escapism of all is to take refuge in the domesticity of the past, the home that history and literature become, avoiding the one moment of time in which we are not at home, yet have to live: the present.”

Tim Parks Quote: “In any power game, it seems, the dominant party is the least likely to be aware of what is going on.”

5. “In any power game, it seems, the dominant party is the least likely to be aware of what is going on.”

Tim Parks Quote: “The purpose of reading is not to pass some final judgement on the text, but to engage with what it has to offer to me now.”

6. “The purpose of reading is not to pass some final judgement on the text, but to engage with what it has to offer to me now.”

Tim Parks Quote: “Life is simply too short for the wrong books, or even the right books at the wrong time.”

7. “Life is simply too short for the wrong books, or even the right books at the wrong time.”

Tim Parks Quote: “Life presents itself first and foremost as a task. We take no pleasure in it except when we are striving after something.”

8. “Life presents itself first and foremost as a task. We take no pleasure in it except when we are striving after something.”

Tim Parks Quote: “Do books, after all, change anything? For all their proverbial liberalism, have they made the world more liberal? Or have they offered the fig leaf that allows us to go on as we were, liberal in our reading and conservative in our living. Perhaps art is more part of the problem than the solution; we may be going to hell, but look how well we write about it, look at our paintings and operas and tragedies.”

9. “Do books, after all, change anything? For all their proverbial liberalism, have they made the world more liberal? Or have they offered the fig leaf that allows us to go on as we were, liberal in our reading and conservative in our living. Perhaps art is more part of the problem than the solution; we may be going to hell, but look how well we write about it, look at our paintings and operas and tragedies.”

Tim Parks Quote: “What wonderful minds we have, even though they don’t seem to get us anywhere, or make us happy.”

10. “What wonderful minds we have, even though they don’t seem to get us anywhere, or make us happy.”

Tim Parks Quote: “With books at least, the best experiences are not when you find what you were looking for, but when something quite different finds you, takes you by surprise, shifts your tastes to new territory.”

11. “With books at least, the best experiences are not when you find what you were looking for, but when something quite different finds you, takes you by surprise, shifts your tastes to new territory.”

Tim Parks Quote: “Nothing is more obsolete than yesterday’s vision of the future.”

12. “Nothing is more obsolete than yesterday’s vision of the future.”

Tim Parks Quote: “And I think, one of the reasons I’ve stayed in Italy is that I believe, perhaps erroneously, perhaps sentimentally, perhaps merely in reaction to my own childhood of church bells and rainy weekends – I do believe that kids have a better time here, that adolescence is more fun here. Certainly I never saw a group of people so confident and at ease with themselves and their youth. I wish it for my children.”

13. “And I think, one of the reasons I’ve stayed in Italy is that I believe, perhaps erroneously, perhaps sentimentally, perhaps merely in reaction to my own childhood of church bells and rainy weekends – I do believe that kids have a better time here, that adolescence is more fun here. Certainly I never saw a group of people so confident and at ease with themselves and their youth. I wish it for my children.”

Tim Parks Quote: “In America the lack of investment in train travel speaks eloquently of a country always ready to appear righteous but pathologically averse to surrendering car and plane for a more eco-friendly, community-conscious form of mobility.”

14. “In America the lack of investment in train travel speaks eloquently of a country always ready to appear righteous but pathologically averse to surrendering car and plane for a more eco-friendly, community-conscious form of mobility.”

Tim Parks Quote: “More than one person has claimed that the whole history of Italy as a nation-state could be reconstructed through an account of the country’s railways.”

15. “More than one person has claimed that the whole history of Italy as a nation-state could be reconstructed through an account of the country’s railways.”

Tim Parks Quote: “It makes the nation possible and allows it to remain fragmented, allows people to live double lives.”

16. “It makes the nation possible and allows it to remain fragmented, allows people to live double lives.”

Tim Parks Quote: “There are people who want to be on their own, to mark out their own territory and be quiet there, and there are people who are eager to invade that territory, to sit close to someone else.”

17. “There are people who want to be on their own, to mark out their own territory and be quiet there, and there are people who are eager to invade that territory, to sit close to someone else.”

Tim Parks Quote: “For my own part, I can’t help thinking that while the trend away from formal discipline is clearly general across the Western world, no people is perhaps as perplexed as the Italians with the whole problem of how to make a child do what it does not want to do. Perhaps because Italian parents so rarely find any good reason for not doing what they want to do.”

18. “For my own part, I can’t help thinking that while the trend away from formal discipline is clearly general across the Western world, no people is perhaps as perplexed as the Italians with the whole problem of how to make a child do what it does not want to do. Perhaps because Italian parents so rarely find any good reason for not doing what they want to do.”

Tim Parks Quote: “In every aspect of Italian life, one of the key characteristics to get to grips with is that this is a nation at ease with the distance between ideal and real. They are beyond what we call hypocrisy. Quite simply they do not register the contradiction between rhetoric and behavior. It’s an enviable mind-set.”

19. “In every aspect of Italian life, one of the key characteristics to get to grips with is that this is a nation at ease with the distance between ideal and real. They are beyond what we call hypocrisy. Quite simply they do not register the contradiction between rhetoric and behavior. It’s an enviable mind-set.”

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