Syntax and vocabulary are overwhelming constraints --the rules that run us. Language is using us to talk --we think we're using the language, but lan…

- Harry Mathews

I think situations are more important than plot and character.

- Harry Mathews

I also had this mistaken dream, fantasy really - perhaps because I'm good at languages - of being able in both Italy and France to become someone els…

- Harry Mathews

I left Princeton, but I graduated Harvard, in 1952.

- Harry Mathews

Music had been my first love among the arts, and I was fascinated by it, as I still am.

- Harry Mathews

My idea was to go to Vienna to study conducting and perhaps play in an orchestra first, so I thought before I got to Vienna I could do with a little …

- Harry Mathews

And I finished college because I thought how much it would upset my parents if I didnt.

- Harry Mathews

Translation is the paradigm, the exemplar of all writing.... It is translation that demonstrates most vividly the yearning for transformation that un…

- Harry Mathews

It’s true, I had an extremely delicious life, but that was my life at home, and perhaps because I was only a child, or for whatever reasons, I found …

- Harry Mathews