The writer who belongs to me (Folly) is far happier in his crazy fashion.
He never loses sleep as he sets down at once whatever takes his fancy
and comes from his pen, even his dreams…

Erasmus of Rotterdam

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that
you leave it and take alms of those who work with joy. For … if you sing though as angels and love not singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and to the voices of the night…

Kahlil Gibran

Translators are like busy matchmakers who praise a half-veiled beauty as being very lovely:
they arouse an irrepressible desire for the original.

Johann Wolfgang Goethe
 

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning!
It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

Voltaire
 

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner.
Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move … Inside you they work their magic.

Diane Setterfield

The translator is clearly the only true reader of a text, certainly more than any critic, even more than its author. Since the critic is nothing more than an ephemeral suitor, the author is its father and husband, the translator is its lover.

Gesualdo Bufalino

Translations are like women:
if they are faithful they are not beautiful, and if they are beautiful they are not faithful.

Carl Bertrand
 

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

Samuel Johnson

 

Another country: I meet my translator, a man who knows not a word of Czech.
“Then how did you translate the book?“
“With my heart.“

Milan Kundera

Just like creating music and poetry, or painting and sculpture, translation is
a yearning to conquer and possess your own reality.

Manara Valgimigli