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Imre Kertész
58 quotes
“If one takes the path of success, then one ends up either successful or unsuccessful, there is no third alternative.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I read somewhere; while God still existed one sustained a dialogue with God, and now that He no longer exists one has to sustain a dialogue with other people, I guess, or, better still, with oneself, that is to say, one talks or mumbles to oneself.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do what I have to do, although I don’t know why I have to.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am still here, although I don’t know why; accidentally, I guess, as I was born; I am as much or as little accomplice to my staying alive as I was to my birth.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man is always a little at fault, that’s all.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I stayed alive therefore I am.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At any rate I found myself writing because I had to write, although I didn’t know why.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For me this is a fact, writing is necessity, I don’t know why, but it seems it was the only solution offered to me, even if it doesn’t solve anything; still it doesn't leave me…”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What we usually mean by fate is what we least understand, that is to say, ourselves, that subversive, unknown individual constantly plotting against us, whom , estranged and alienated but still bowing with disgust before his might, we call, for the of simplicity, fate.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To live and to write, it's all the same, both together, for the pen is my spade; when I look ahead I only look back, when I stare at the paper I only see the past: she crossed that bluish green carpet as if she were crossing the sea because she wanted to talk to me, for she found out that I was "B.", author and literary translator, one of whose "works" had read, and which she definitely wanted to discuss with me, she said, and we talked and talked until we talked ourselves into bed — Good God! — and continued to talk even then, uninterrupted.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Auschwitz cannot be explained." And yet, it doesn’t take a Wittgenstein to notice that the sentence is faulty even from the point of pure linguistic logic;”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I live and occasionally I look up at the glorious air or the clouds into which I keep digging my grave with my pen, diligently, like a forced laborer, whom they order every day to dig deeper with his spade…”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sentence "Auschwitz cannot be explained" is faulty simply from a formal point of view, for anything that is has an explanation, even if by necessity a merely self-serving faulty, so so explanation.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By way of that wretched sentence "Auschwitz cannot be explained" is the wretched author explaining that we should be silent concerning Auschwitz, that Auschwitz doesn’t exist, or, rather, that it didn’t, for the only facts that cannot be explained are those that don’t or didn’t exist.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“... mert ami valóban irracionális, az nem a rossz, ellenkezőleg: a jó.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Failure alone remains as the one single accomplishable experience;”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world is not our imagination but our nightmare, full of inconceivable surprises.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing upsets me as much as a shop window jammed full of objects; such windows literally depress, sadden, even demoralize me.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My body is foreign to me that body that sustains me and will, ultimately, kill me.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Cognitively we don’t know and will never discover what occasions the cause of our existence, we don’t know the purpose of our existence and we don’t know why we have to disappear from here once we have been placed here, I don’t know, why I have to live this fragmentary existence, which happened to be my lot, instead of a life that perhaps does exist somewhere. Why did I get this lot? This sex, this body, this awareness, this geographic setting, this fate, this language, this history, this rented room?”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have felt that some sort of awful shame is attached to my name and that I have somehow brought this shame along from somewhere I have never been, and that I have carried this sin as my sin even though I have never committed it; this sin pursues me all my life, which life is undoubtedly not my own even thought I live it , I suffer from it die of it.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No" — I could never be another person’s father, fate, god, "No" — it should never happen to another child, what happened to me; my childhood. (Auschwitz).”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How can we do justice even when it concerns truth itself, since for me only one truth exists, my truth, even if it is a delusion, yes, my delusion; my delusion.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Auschwitz, I told her, appears to me in the image of a father; yes, the two terms, Auschwitz, and father, resonate the same echoes in me, and if the observation is that God is an exalted father, then God, too is revealed to me in the image of Auschwitz.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us call our man, the hero of this story, Kingbitter. We imagine a man, and a name to go with him. Or conversely, let us imagine the name, and the man to go with it.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For Kingbitter the Hamlet question did not run “To be or not to be?” but “Am I or am I not?”.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Boredom. He takes it with him everywhere, like an angry shaggy terrier that he sets on others from time to time.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You just sit here and tolerate it, the same way everything in this country is tolerated. Every deception, every lie, every bullet in the brains. Just as you are already tolerating bullets in the brains that will be implemented only after the bullet is put in your brains.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The state is always the same. The only reason it financed literature up till now was in order to liquidate it. Giving state support to literature is the state's sneaky way for the state liquidation of literature.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He himself had said near enough exactly what was in the play. The only snag was that by the time that scene was played out in reality, almost word for word, the person who had written the play, and that scene in it, was no longer alive. He had committed suicide.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everyone here makes a botch of his life. That's the local specialty, the genius loci. Anyone who doesn't botch up his life here simply has no talent.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He liked the style, that wry gallows humor armed with the semblance of omniscience; a most serviceable style it was, the dialect of the initiated, protecting them from their disillusionments, their fears, their well-concealed childish hopes.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man, when reduced to nothing, or in other words a survivor, is not tragic but comic, because he has no fate.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Survivors represent a separate species, just like an animal species. We are all survivors, that is what determines our perverse and degenerate mental world. Auschwitz.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only from our stories can we discover that our stories have come to an end, otherwise we would go on living as if there were still something for us to continue (our stories, for example); that is, we would go on living in error.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Writers complete their works, whether those be thousands of pages long or just a few laconic lines.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Good can be done in a life in which Evil is the life principle, but only at the cost of the doer’s sacrificing his life.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you’re a revolutionary, you shouldn’t have started a family.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I had gotten into the habit of sleeping late because I had started to see that this was the only sensible way I could kill time.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But I believe in writing — nothing else; just writing. Man may live like a worm, but he writes like a god. There was a time when that secret was known, but now it has been forgotten; the world is composed of disintegrating fragments, an incoherent dark chaos, sustained by writing alone. If you have a concept of the world, if you have not yet forgotten all that has happened, that you have a world at all, it is writing that has created that for you, and ceaselessly goes on creating it; Logos, the invisible spider’s thread that holds our lives together.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Writers sometimes cast themselves into the most profound depths of despair in order to master it and move on.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A person’s true means of expression is his life. Living the shame of life and maintaining silence, that was the greatest accomplishment of all.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anyone who wants something else is Jewish.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There’s just one revolution that I can take seriously, and that’s a police revolution.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I exist. Is this a life still? No, just vegetating. It seems that only one philosophy can succeed the philosophy of existentialism: nonexistentialism, the philosophy of nonexistent existence.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nonexistence. The society of the nonexistent. In the street yesterday a nonexistent person trod on my foot with his nonexistent foot.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I took a stroll in the city. It was infernally hot. The usual evening hubbub around me. Lovers on the pavements, hurrying to cinemas and other places of amusement as if nothing had happened, nothing. Living their nonexistent lives. Or do they exit, and it’s me who doesn’t.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of course, living is another way of killing oneself: its drawback is that it takes so horribly long.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am sick of atrocities, though these are now the natural order of our world. And I would still like to act!”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Talking is not enough; words don’t clarify anything. I’ll have to hit upon something, but what?”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source