Raymond Queneau quotes

Raymond Queneau was a French novelist, poet, and co-founder of the Oulipo literary group. His works are known for their inventive language, humor, and experimentation with literary forms. He deeply influenced modern literature and inspired generations of writers. Here are 20 of his quotes:

Ulysses finds himself unchanged, aside from his experience, at the end of his odyssey. (Raymond Queneau)
There have been only rare moments in history where individual histories were able to run their course without wars or revolutions. View quote
Raymond Queneau
We have gotten away from this double aspect of either putting the character back into historical events or of making a historical event of his very life. View quote
Raymond Queneau
Fiction has consisted either of placing imaginary characters in a true story, which is the Iliad, or of presenting the story of an individual as having a general historical value, which is the Odyssey. View quote
Raymond Queneau
A very great Iliad... concerns the creation of a nation. View quote
Raymond Queneau
Being or nothing, that is the question. Ascending, descending, coming, going, a man does so much that in the end he disappears. View quote
Raymond Queneau
All confessions are Odysseys. View quote
Raymond Queneau
All societies are historical. View quote
Raymond Queneau
He sought an adventure but didn't find one. He was inexperienced and besides he didn't have too much imagination. View quote
Raymond Queneau
One can easily classify all works of fiction either as descendants of the Iliad or of the Odyssey. View quote
Raymond Queneau
The Odyssey is the story of someone who, in the course of diverse experiences, acquires a personality or affirms and recovers his personality. (Raymond Queneau)
Many novelists take well-defined, precise characters, whose stories are sometimes of mediocre interest, and place them in an important historical context, which remains secondary in spite of everything. View quote
Raymond Queneau
It is the creator of fiction's point of view; it is the character who interests him. Sometimes he wants to convince the reader that the story he is telling is as interesting as universal history. View quote
Raymond Queneau
The Iliad is the private lives of people thrown into disorder by history. View quote
Raymond Queneau
The Odyssey is the story of Americans up to the point where they are well-established, and even so it is detached from the historical side. View quote
Raymond Queneau
True stories deal with hunger, imaginary ones with love. View quote
Raymond Queneau
Religions tend to disappear with man's good fortune. View quote
Raymond Queneau
To have one's own story told by a third party who doesn't know that the character in question is himself the hero of the story being told, that's a technical refinement. View quote
Raymond Queneau
It doesn't seem to me that anyone has discovered much that's new since the Iliad or the Odyssey. View quote
Raymond Queneau
When Ulysses hears his own story sung by an epic poet and then he reveals his identity and the poet wants to continue singing, Ulysses isn't interested any longer. That's very astonishing. View quote
Raymond Queneau

Raymond Queneau

Raymond Queneau - Image
Photo: Jean-Max Albert, CC BY-SA 4.0
Occupation: French Novelist
Born: February 21, 1903
Died: October 25, 1976
Quotes count: 20
Wikipedia: Raymond Queneau

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