Imre Kertész quotes - page 2

Writers sometimes cast themselves into the most profound depths of despair in order to master it and move on. (Imre Kertész)
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. View quote
Imre Kertész
Failure alone remains as the one single accomplishable experience. View quote
Imre Kertész
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. View quote
Imre Kertész
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. View quote
Imre Kertész
I do what I have to do, although I don't know why I have to. View quote
Imre Kertész
At any rate I found myself writing because I had to write, although I didn't know why. View quote
Imre Kertész
I stayed alive therefore I am. View quote
Imre Kertész
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. View quote
Imre Kertész
The world is not our imagination but our nightmare, full of inconceivable surprises. View quote
Imre Kertész
My body is foreign to me that body that sustains me and will, ultimately, kill me. (Imre Kertész)
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. View quote
Imre Kertész
On the other hand, what is really irrational and what truly cannot be explained is not evil but, contrarily, the good. View quote
Imre Kertész
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. View quote
Imre Kertész
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. View quote
Imre Kertész
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... View quote
Imre Kertész
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. View quote
Imre Kertész
"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). View quote
Imre Kertész
Maybe I'm worn out, but it could be that I never truly believed in what I believed. View quote
Imre Kertész
Giving state support to literature is the state's sneaky way for the state liquidation of literature. View quote
Imre Kertész
If people had understood the greatness of those works, they would have destroyed them long ago. (Imre Kertész)
It seems that only one philosophy can succeed the philosophy of existentialism: nonexistentialism, the philosophy of nonexistent existence. View quote
Imre Kertész
If a person resolves to fight, he ought to know what he is fighting for. Otherwise it makes no sense. View quote
Imre Kertész
Survivors represent a separate species, just like an animal species. View quote
Imre Kertész
Once you have started, the only way back is to go forward. View quote
Imre Kertész