Language is something you inherit, it's never just you doing the talking, which helps when you're pretending. — Cees Nooteboom Copy Share Image
Man has been thrown into the world. It had always made him think of Icarus and those other great tumblers, Ixion, Phaeton, Tantalus -… — Cees Nooteboom Copy Share Image
“We are our secrets, and, if all goes well, we will take them with us to where no-one can touch them.” — Cees Nooteboom Copy Share Image
“Kummer hat etwas in den Linien deines Gesichts zu suchen, nicht in deiner Erinnerung.” — Cees Nooteboom Copy Share Image
I have never cared much for people. Most of them are cowards, conformists, muddleheads, moneygrubbers, and they infect each other. — Cees Nooteboom Copy Share Image
As far as he could see, the world was moving, in an orderly capitalist fashion, toward a logical, perhaps provisional, perhaps permanent, end. — Cees Nooteboom Copy Share Image
“...a poem is only finished when the last reader has read it or listened to it.” — Cees Nooteboom Copy Share Image
“All right, she thought I was a funny little geezer, but my charred Phaethon had impressed her, I was very obviously available, and she… — Cees Nooteboom Copy Share Image
Through men ... you learn how the world is. Through women you learn what it is. — Cees Nooteboom Copy Share Image
“Conversations consist for the most part of things one does not say.” — Cees Nooteboom Copy Share Image
So-called real life has only once interfered with me, and it had been a far cry from what the words, lines, books had prepared… — Cees Nooteboom Copy Share Image
