# Quote — Imre Kertész, Detective Story

> "You mustn’t forget about your future, Enrique."
>
> "I’m living for the present, Dad."
>
> "Ah!" he waved that aside. "The present is just temporary."
>
> ‘ I boiled up. "I know," I burst out. ‘It only has to be accepted temporarily — temporarily, but every day afresh. And every day ever more. Temporarily. Until we have lived to the end of our temporary lives, and one fine day we temporarily die.

- Author: [Imre Kertész](https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz.md)
- Book: [Detective Story](https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz/detective-story.md)
- Page: 66
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Imre_Kert%C3%A9sz#Detective_Story_(2008)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/imre-kertesz/detective-story/you-mustnt-forget

## More from this book

> 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)