Iona

I saw an ad in newspapers about a trip to the mountains and I got in without knowing anybody. About 30 of us crowded in a big race vehicle, so boys and girls, parcels, cigarette smoke, and jokes mixed up together at random. A certain Biţă was speaking in my ear untiringly.

from Requiem for Fools and Beasts That day, Estera did not come to the stadium, but the following two evenings she was there again; however, I did not pluck up enough courage to speak to her, and after overtaking me several times, she kept running about three hundred meters

excerpts First of all I have to recall that moment of my life which was the origin of the incidents that I will evoke in these confessions. It was the instant – so dramatic to me – when I first saw Alba. But right in that moment, which twisted so many years that were

The bibliography of my works I threw into the pyre included a 125-pages psychoanalytical study about Iulia Hasdeu. I had discovered her diaristic notes at the State Archives. They were then, and still are, a novelty, and perhaps a sensational thing; I'm talking about

I strove to follow, as much as I could, the form and language of the national Chronicles that have been the rightful pride of the Land of Moldavia; to collect traditions and names and words of old, in order to lend color to these episodes inspired from the old chronicles.

excerpts IThe Tomb The Royal Church bells of the townlet of Bucharest were pealing rhythmically in a mournful voice, whilst, from the hillock in sight, the small-rounded belfry of Bucur's little church was echoing back the toll in a wailing-remote fashion. It was

The first woman characters of the modern Romanian literature were anything but womanly. The Romanian romantic theatre and the historical romances of the nineteenth century abound in strong-willed, ambitious princesses, exasperated by the lack of guts in their male partners.

excerpts Almost every night I talk to Adela on the porch. The ladies go to sleep earlier. Adela shows an attentive, almost submissive, sympathy to the maestro. She is, however, more personal in opinions than before. But what is going on inside her? When she talks it always

Whenever I see you sincere I have the feeling that, in everybody's war against everybody, you left your coat of mail at home.  There is one thing a man does without any feeling of responsibility: that which he should make with the feeling of utmost responsibility:

Like diaries and memoirs, portraits and especially self-portraits represent a favorite means of inserting the creator's self into history. One may eventually infer, if not directly grasp a writer's or a painter's positions and opinions about his milieu and

excerpts The Diary and Its Readers We should not overdo it with diaries and letters. We usually tend to deem them more revealing of the man than his public work. All that is secretive, familiar draws us as if it were a confession. It is the pleasure of breaking an interdiction,

* Excerpts from an interview with prose writer, political analyst and journalist Stelian TĂNASE (Observator cultural no. 121, 18-24 June 2002) Why did you choose to publish At Home We Speak in Whispers at this particular moment? Books come and go in a writer's imagination.