Herta Muller Quotes

What can't be said can be written. Because writing is a silent act, a labor from the head to the hand.

Suffering doesn't improve human beings, does it?

Anything in literature, including memory, is second-hand.

Women always need other women to lean on. They become friends in order to hate each other better. The more they hate each other, the more inseparable they become.

In this county, we had to walk, eat, sleep and love in fear.

Language is so different from life. How am I supposed to fit the one into the other? How can I bring them together?

Once upon a time they had some bad luck, and they blame everything on that.

In Romanian society, I am not particularly well-liked. I don't often receive invitations.

I wanted to get out of our thimble of a town, where every stone had eyes.

If you live with death threats, you need friends. So you have to risk that they might spy on you.

I have always written only for myself - to clarify things, to clarify things with myself, to understand in an inner way what is actually happening.

Writing itself does not know what it looks like while one is doing it, only when it's finished.

If only the right person would have to leave, everyone else would be able to stay in the country.

When we don't speak, said Edgar, we become unbearable, and when we do, we make fools of ourselves.

Who can take a single step with his head?

Only the demented would not have raised their hands in the great hall. They had exchanged fear for insanity".