Ariel Dorfman

Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean-American novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist.

Quotes

• I think the genre decides for me—which sounds like a way of avoiding the question unless I explain first that this chameleon-like border crossing, this shifting of genre identities is, I realize, parallel to, or anticipates, or recollects my own life. I’m probably fluctuating across genres perhaps because my identity itself is always in flux…
  • On his decision of what genre to write in in “Interview with Ariel Dorfman” (Dalkey Archive Press)

• Not to belong anywhere, to be displaced, is not a bad thing for a writer…If you can deal with it. If it doesn’t destroy you.
  • On not feeling that a place is truly home in “Ariel Dorfman: 'Not to belong anywhere, to be displaced, is not a bad thing for a writer'” in The Guardian (2018 May 9)

• More than a traveler, I’m a displacer. In other words, I’m a person who is constantly meditating on what it means not to arrive at a place, but to be on my way somewhere else.
  • On further elaborating on his point of being displaced in “Ariel Dorfman: 'Not to belong anywhere, to be displaced, is not a bad thing for a writer'” in The Guardian (2018 May 9)

• The past is really unknowable, but it’s got to be knowable enough so that we can seek forgiveness for our crimes…
  • On confronting and atoning for the past in “Ariel Dorfman: 'Not to belong anywhere, to be displaced, is not a bad thing for a writer'” in The Guardian (2018 May 9)