Thomas Mann Quotes

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

The mental state is always the primary and ultimately the motivating state. Political action is of second rank, reflex, expression, instrument.

For man always searches for recognition: he would like to find the old in the new and the ordinary in the individual.

A person can be fully involved in a story without understanding it.

Self-love is always the beginning of a novelistic affair.

For time is the medium of narration, as it is the medium of life. Both are inextricably bound up with it, as are bodies in space. Similarly, time is the medium of music; music divides, measures, articulates time, and can  shorten it, yet enhance its value, both at once.