Books by Machado de Assis

“Well, I just got it in the mail one day. Some stranger in Brazil sent it and wrote, ‘You’ll like this.’ Because it’s a thin book, I read it. If it had been a thick book, I would have discarded it. I was shocked by how charming and amusing it was. I couldn’t believe he lived as long ago as he did. You would’ve thought he wrote it yesterday. It’s so modern and so amusing. It’s a very, very original piece of work…it resonated with me, in the same way as when I see movies by Ingmar Bergman. They mean something to me because of his preoccupations and his view of life. It rang a bell in me, in the same way that The Catcher in the Rye did. It was about subject matter that I liked and it was treated with great wit, great originality and no sentimentality.” Read more...

Woody Allen on The Books that Inspired Him

Woody Allen, Film Director