Imre Kertész

"But there are times when being happy — just happy, nothing else — is simply vile."

"Why?" Jill inquired.

"Because," Enrique reasoned, "one cant be happy in a place where everybody is unhappy."

If a person resolves to fight, he ought to know what he is fighting for. Otherwise it makes no sense. A person usually fights against a power in order to gain power himself. Or else because the power in question is threatening his life.

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.

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.

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.

Talking is not enough; words don’t clarify anything. I’ll have to hit upon something, but what?

Anyone who wants something else is Jewish.

Boredom. He takes it with him everywhere, like an angry shaggy terrier that he sets on others from time to time.

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.

For Kingbitter the Hamlet question did not run “To be or not to be?” but “Am I or am I not?”.

I am sick of atrocities, though these are now the natural order of our world. And I would still like to act!

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.