António Lobo Antunes quotes

António Lobo Antunes is a renowned Portuguese novelist and psychiatrist, celebrated for his complex and introspective literary style. His works often explore themes of memory, identity, and the lasting effects of Portugal’s colonial past. He has received numerous literary awards and is considered one of the leading voices in contemporary European literature. Here are 10 of his quotes:

I suppose I have become a sort of living monument in Portugal. But I come from a family with roots all over the world, so the idea of patriotism is not very strong in me. My country is the country of Chekhov, Beethoven, Velasquez - writers I like, painters and artists I admire. (António Lobo Antunes)
Of all the doctors I have known, psychoanalysts, a congregation of lay priests with bible, rites, and the faithful, constitute the most sinister, the most ridiculous, the most unwholesome of the species. View quote
António Lobo Antunes
I was very interested in the relationship between the man who speaks and the woman who listens. I was drawn to the idea that the relationship between a man and a woman can be something like a war itself, very cruel and violent. View quote
António Lobo Antunes
Asylums are nothing more than gardens of human cabbages, of miserable, grotesque, repugnant human beings watered with the fertilizer of injections. View quote
António Lobo Antunes
It's funny - my wife is more jealous of my books than of other women because I'm always working and thinking about my books. View quote
António Lobo Antunes
A long time ago, I read in a book that a woman's homeland is wherever she fell in love. View quote
António Lobo Antunes
Whenever anyone declares having read a book of mine I am disappointed by the error. That's because my books are not to be read in the sense usually called reading: the only way it seems to me to approach the novels that I write is to catch them in the same manner that one catches an illness. View quote
António Lobo Antunes
I'm just giving you some spiel, the ludicrous plot of a novel, a story I invented to touch your heart-one-third bullshit, one-third booze, and one-third genuine tenderness, you know the kind of thing. View quote
António Lobo Antunes
Nothing else exists for them [Psychiatrists] in the universe beyond enormous mothers and fathers, colossal, almost cosmic, and a child reduced to an anus, penis, and mouth who maintains with these two unbearable creatures a singular relationship from which are excluded spontaneity and joy. View quote
António Lobo Antunes
There are 3 or 4 important things in life: Books, Friends, Women...and Messi. View quote
António Lobo Antunes