# Imre Kertész - Quotes: 34 - Author page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz ## Books - [Detective Story](https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz/detective-story.md) — 12 quotes - [Liquidation](https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz/liquidation.md) — 22 quotes ## Recently added quotes > Thereafter, the scenes had succeeded one another, turn and turn about, in the drama as in reality, to the point that, in the end, Kingbitter did not know what to admire more: the author's-his dead friend's-crystal-clear foresight or his own, so to say, remorseful determination to identify with his prescribed role and stick to the story. > > Nowadays, though, with the lapse of nine years, Kingbitter was interested in something else. His story had reached an end, but he himself was still here, posing a problem for which he more and more put off finding a solution. He would either have to carry on his story, which had proved impossible, or else start a new story, which had proved equally impossible. Kingbitter undoubtedly could see solutions to hand, both better ones and worse; indeed, if he reflected more deeply, solutions were all he could see, rather than lives. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz/liquidation/thereafter-the-scenes.md) > 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. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz/liquidation/a-persons-true.md) > Of course, living is another way of killing oneself: its drawback is that it takes so horribly long. p. 35 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz/detective-story/of-course-living.md) > Nonexistence. The society of the nonexistent. In the street yesterday a nonexistent person trod on my foot with his nonexistent foot. p. 30 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz/detective-story/nonexistence-the-society.md) > 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. p. 31 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz/detective-story/i-took-a-stroll.md) > 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. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz/liquidation/he-liked-the.md) > 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. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz/liquidation/let-us-call.md) > True, he had been living a lively interior life today: he had dreamed something, he had awoken with an erection, and while shaving he had been dogged by a feeling that today he needed to decide, though he could not see clearly what it was he needed to decide, besides which he was all too aware of his own inability to make any decisions. > > Despite that, the thought did cross Kingbitter's mind that he ought to do something about finding a theater to do the play, the comedy (or tragedy?) "Liquidation." > > He was now in the ninth year of considering that. > > Indeed, Kingbitter was now in the ninth year of considering whether he was handling the literary estate with due diligence. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz/liquidation/true-he-had.md) > 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. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz/liquidation/you-just-sit.md) > Man, when reduced to nothing, or in other words a survivor, is not tragic but comic, because he has no fate. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz/liquidation/man-when-reduced.md) > Writers complete their works, whether those be thousands of pages long or just a few laconic lines. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz/liquidation/writers-complete-their.md) > 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. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz/liquidation/good-can-be-done.md)