Sentences, Stories

“A good translation does not just convey the same meaning, but it gets the music of the words right..A good sentence is one that plays with the expectation of the reader.”

- Orhan Pamuk

“I grew up with the tradition of the wonderful tale. And because we were raised with this tradition of the wonderful tale, we learned at an early age that fiction is actually not true....An author’s responsibility in fiction is to make the reader believe a story. And he has to make the reader believe until the end of the book. Otherwise, you say ‘to hell with this,’ and you go read another book.”

- Salman Rushdie

(From a report on a session of readings by Salman Rushdie, Norman Manea, and Orhan Pamuk.)