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

This makes his writing very pleasing to read: João Gilberto Noll pays attention to detail, but only to certain details. And it’s never easy to foresee which details will send the narrator or the plot in an unsuspected direction.

I have a few minor rules for myself but I break them all the time. For example, when translating from Romance languages to English, there is often a choice between a Latinate cognate and a Germanic equivalent.

I primarily write nonfiction. Research, reflection, and spending time with ideas are important to me. So, this is how I spend most of my time writing – in thought.

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.

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.

When you don’t know what to do, do what’s right and do what’s in front of you. But not necessarily what’s right in front of you.

Also, coming from a TV personality – MTV was all about high energy and selling the hottest video – I had to learn to [take it down]. A lot of characters I’m playing are not necessarily that kind of guy.

I don’t think the public is dying to see me necessarily be funny all the time.

Genius … is necessarily intolerant of fetters.

I don’t necessarily sit down and talk to my friends about all the things that I write my music about, because it’s easier for me to write music than to sit and talk to my friends about it sometimes- it’s almost like writing in a diary.

The reasoning man who scorns the prejudices of simpletons necessarily becomes the enemy of simpletons; he must expect as much, and laugh at the inevitable.

The bad things that do happen. A good 50% of our lives is things that are happening that we’re not necessarily super thrilled about and I feel like that’s missing from pop music a lot of the time so my main goal is to be truthful about everything and not just specific things.

Someone asked if I wanted to be the first female Bond, and I was saying that I don’t think we necessarily need that whole conversation.