Ismail Kadare

Ismail Kadare (Albanian pronunciation: [ismaˈil kadaˈɾe], also spelled Ismaïl Kadaré in French; 28 January 1936 – 1 July 2024) was an Albanian novelist, poet, essayist, and playwright. He was a leading literary figure in Albania since the 1960s. He focused on poetry until the publication of his first novel, The General of the Dead Army, which made him a leading literary figure in Albania and famous internationally. In 1996, France made him a foreign associate of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques of France.

Quotes

• "Thick smoke like a herd of black horses was rising over the massive building and being blown around by the wind."
  • Ismail Kadare, Chronicle in Stone

• "It was only a phrase that went from mouth to mouth and was never quite swallowed."
  • Ismail Kadare, Broken April

• "And everything would be different, different."
  • Ismail Kadare, Broken April

• "If an animal has to be sacrificed when a new bridge is built, what will it take to build a whole new world?"
  • Ismail Kadare, Chronicle in Stone

• "To tell the truth, this was one of the few cases in which she had not told him just what she was thinking. Usually, she let him know whatever thoughts happened to come to her, and indeed he never took it amiss if she let slip a word that might pain him, because when all was said and done that was the price one paid for sincerity."
  • Ismail Kadare, Broken April

• "I couldn't get to sleep. The book lay nearby. A thin object on the divan. So strange. Between two cardboard covers were noises, doors, howls, horses, people. All side by side, pressed tightly against one another. Boiled down to little black marks. Hair, eyes, voices, nails, legs, knocks on doors, walls, blood, beards, the sound of horseshoes, shouts. All docile, blindly obedient to the little black marks. The letters run in mad haste, now here, now there. The a's, f's, y's, k's all run. They gather together to create a horse or a hailstorm. They run again. Now they create a dagger, a night, a murder. Then streets, slamming doors, silence. Running and running. Never stopping."
  • Ismail Kadare, Chronicle in Stone

• "The days were heavy and sticky. All identical, one the same as the other. Soon they would even get rid of their one remaining distinction, the shell of their names: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday."
  • Ismail Kadare, Chronicle in Stone

• "Can one move an empire as if it were a house?"
  • Ismail Kadare, Elegy for Kosovo: Stories

• "Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible... The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship."
  • Ismail Kadare

• "I became familiar with literature before I knew freedom, so that it was literature that led me to liberty, not the other way around. Faith in literature and in the creative process brings protection. It generates antibodies that allow you to struggle against state terror."
  • Ismail Kadare