“I am not one of those translators who think that working closely with the writer will yield the best translation.”

English offers both obscurity and dark or darkness, and some translators will tell you the Latinate word is generally reserved for poetic and figurative expressions, while the Germanic word is used for colloquial and idiomatic use.

The Brazilian national identity is not one of João Gilberto Noll primary concerns. This does not mean social critique is absent: race, gender, and class relations are considered in Quiet Creature.

Which sometimes forecloses their unique modernism and experience of modernization in favor of a mythic past or an artificially constructed ideal national subject.

Once I looked into it, I was taken aback to learn that pretty much nothing by Joao Gilberto Noll was available in English translation.

With My Dog-Eyes by Hilda Hilst got more exposure and reached far more readers than I ever expected.

I am surprised by the word psychedelic. João Gilberto Noll does not accept realism in a straightforward way, but I am more inclined to call Quiet Creature a realist text than I am to call it a psychedelic one.

I don’t think there’s anything that I would call essentially Brazilian in João Gilberto Noll work. In that regard, it translates very well to a cosmopolitan audience.

The main reason I decided to study Latin American literature was because I’d gotten somewhat bored by the American fiction I was reading. I am not drawn to a specific style or aesthetic.

And these are universal relational matters, not necessarily particular to any country.

Reading across three languages is a way for me to diversify my intake as a reader, not to tunnel into certain categories or demographics.

The Argentine literary tradition was believed by many, including many Argentines, to be concerned with a national imaginary in which the gauchos and the pampas and the tango were fundamental tropes.

So likewise in João Gilberto Noll, readers shouldn’t expect samba and Carnival and football. The Brazilian national identity is not one of his primary concerns.

Borges, in part to legitimize his own Europhilia, correctly pointed out that expecting writers to engage with these romantic nationalist tropes was arbitrary and limiting, a genre that was demonstrative of its own artificiality.

The fiction I’ve written and published is certainly inflected by the work of authors I was reading or translating at the time.

One of my methods for developing my own voice in fiction, a process I am taking very slowly and deliberately, is through these very intense encounters with certain writers.

I realized I had some cultural capital to spend, and I wanted to use it to introduce another author who might be considered a risk by conventional publishers. Michael Noll was at the top of my list.

I do my best on the golf course. I am learning about the business side of it. But I have a lot of great partners that help me with all those things.

In life, you have got to make the best of every situation; you have to keep going.

It will be a great accomplishment if I become the best player in the world. But if my children can grow up with great core values and become great people and do good things and are happy, then, man, that would bring me great joy.

A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.

We all started playing football against our best friends, and I can’t remember a moment where, because it was my best friend, I did not want to win against him.

Bad performances can happen and are not that serious – even with new players. You can’t, say, sell him, get a new one.

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.

The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.