All of my problems are rather complicated - I need an entire novel to deal with them, not a short story or a movie. It's like a personal therapy.
Manuel Puig

As a rule, one should never place form over content.
Manuel Puig

Book reviews have never helped me. Most of them erred in their interpretations and their work has been a waste of time.
Manuel Puig

Contrary to what Kafka does, I always like to refer all of my fictions to the level of reality, He, on the other hand, leaves them at an imaginary level.
Manuel Puig

For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free.
Manuel Puig

Hitchcock makes it very clear to us. There's an objective and a subjective camera, like there's a third- and a first-person narrator in literature.
Manuel Puig

I allow my intuition to lead my path.
Manuel Puig

I am only interested in bad taste if I can enjoy a gruesome tango or watch a movie that makes me cry.
Manuel Puig

I am very interested in what has been called bad taste. I believe the fear of displaying a soi-disant bad taste stops us from venturing into special cultural zones.
Manuel Puig

I began teaching in New York because I needed to stay in the United States and didn't have my immigration papers in order, so working for a university was a way of resolving the issue.
Manuel Puig


I believe realism is nothing but an analysis of reality. Film scripts have a synthetical constitution.
Manuel Puig

I believe that people who don't achieve anything in life are isolated and resent those that are successful.
Manuel Puig

I can work in films as long as the story doesn't have a realistic nature. If I'm working with an allegory, a fantasy, it can be developed in synthetic terms.
Manuel Puig

I didn't choose literature. Literature chose me. There was no decision on my side.
Manuel Puig

I do believe that reading can help you understand what you're writing and see what others are doing. But sometimes the desire for more information can act as an inhibitor.
Manuel Puig

I don't have traceable literary models because I haven't had great literary influences in my life.
Manuel Puig

I don't think humor is forced upon my universe; it's a part of it.
Manuel Puig

I don't want to name names, but the least I can say about rock and roll is that I'm suspicious.
Manuel Puig

I felt the need to tell stories to understand myself.
Manuel Puig

I had stories that needed more space than the hour and a half or two hours a movie gives you.
Manuel Puig