Herta Muller famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Writing itself does not know what it looks like while one is doing it, only when it's finished.
-- Herta Muller

#Writing #Doe #Looks
Suffering doesn't improve human beings, does it?
-- Herta Muller

#Suffering #Doe #Humans
Who can take a single step with his head?
-- Herta Muller

#Steps #Action
What can be said about chronic hunger. Perhaps that there's a hunger that can make you sick with hunger. That it comes in addition to the hunger you already feel. That there is a hunger which is always new, which grows insatiably, which pounces on the never-ending old hunger that already took such effort to tame. How can you face the world if all you can say about yourself is that you're hungry.
-- Herta Muller

#Sick #Effort #World
I wanted to get out of our thimble of a town, where every stone had eyes.
-- Herta Muller

#Eye #Stones #Towns
What can't be said can be written. Because writing is a silent act, a labor from the head to the hand.
-- Herta Muller

#Writing #Hands #Silent
If you live with death threats, you need friends. So you have to risk that they might spy on you.
-- Herta Muller

#Risk #Spy #Needs
In Romanian society, I am not particularly well-liked. I don't often receive invitations.
-- Herta Muller

#Wells #Invitations
I have always written only for myself - to clarify things, to clarify things with myself, to understand in an inner way what is actually happening.
-- Herta Muller

#Way
In this county, we had to walk, eat, sleep and love in fear.
-- Herta Muller

#Fear #Sleep #And Love
Some people speak and sing and walk and sit and sleep and silence their homesickness, for a long time, and to no avail. Some say that over time homesickness loses its specific content, that it starts to smolder and only then becomes all-consuming, because itâ€™s no longer focused on a concrete home. I am one of the people who say that.
-- Herta Muller

#Home #Sleep #Long
Anything in literature, including memory, is second-hand,
-- Herta Muller

#Memories #Hands #Literature
Only the demented would not have raised their hands in the great hall. They had exchanged fear for insanity".
-- Herta Muller

#Hands #Insanity #Demented
Women always need other women to lean on. They become friends in order to hate each other better. The more they hate each other, the more inseparable they become.
-- Herta Muller

#Hate #Order #Needs
Once upon a time they had some bad luck, and they blame everything on that.
-- Herta Muller

#Once Upon A Time #Luck #Blame
I have packed myself into silence so deeply and for so long that I can never unpack myself using words. When I speak, I only pack myself a little differently.
-- Herta Muller

#Long #Silence #Littles
I'm always telling myself I don't have many feelings. Even when something does affect me I'm only moderately moved. I almost never cry. It's not that I'm stronger than the ones with teary eyes, I'm weaker. They have courage. When all you are is skin and bones, feelings are a brave thing. I'm more of a coward. The difference is minimal though, I just use my strength not to cry. When I do allow myself a feeling, I take the part that hurts and bandage it up with a story that doesn't cry, that doesn't dwell on homesickness.
-- Herta Muller

#Hurt #Eye #Differences
When we don't speak, said Edgar, we become unbearable, and when we do, we make fools of ourselves.
-- Herta Muller

#Fool #Unbearable #Speak
Everyday brought me further away from other people, I had been placed out of the world's sight, as if in a cupboard, and I hoped it would stay that way. I developed a yearning for being alone, unkempt, untended.
-- Herta Muller

#Sight #People #Everyday
If only the right person would have to leave, everyone else would be able to stay in the country.
-- Herta Muller

#Country #Would Be #Able
To combat death you don't need much of a life, just one that isn't yet finished.
-- Herta Muller

#Needs #Combat
My flesh was burning where the skin was scraped off my knees, and I was afraid that I couldn't be alive anymore with so much pain, and at the same time I knew I was alive because it hurt. I was afraid that death would find its way into me through this open knee and I quickly covered my knee with my hands.
-- Herta Muller

#Hurt #Pain #Hands

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