Imre Kertész

I tried to depict the human face of this history, I wanted to write a book that people would actually want to…

— Imre Kertész

“Man, when reduced to nothing, or in other words a survivor, is not tragic but comic, because he has no fate.”

— Imre Kertész

“On one occasion she had spoken heatedly about the French Revolution, saying it had been little better than the Nazis. Her great-aunt…

— Imre Kertész

“As we pass one step, and as we recognize it as being behind us, the next one already rises up before us.…

— Imre Kertész

...I would like to live a little bit longer in this beautiful concentration camp.

— Imre Kertész

“I can see the young man on dizzily autumn mornings, the fog of which he inhaled just like the rapidly evaporating freedom.”

— Imre Kertész

Nonexistence. The society of the nonexistent. In the street yesterday a nonexistent person trod on my foot with his nonexistent foot.

— Imre Kertész

“The West in general should stand up more for its own values. It is not always worthwhile to compromise.”

— imre kertesz

One cannot start a new life, you can only continue the old one.

— Imre Kertész

“Você sobrevive a sua falta de sensibilidade e compreende que o vazio do mundo é, de certa maneira, obra sua.”

— Imre Kertész

Of course, living is another way of killing oneself: its drawback is that it takes so horribly long.

— Imre Kertész

Man, when reduced to nothing, or in other words, a survivor, is not tragic but comic, because he has no fate. On…

— Imre Kertesz

“I read somewhere; while God still existed one sustained a dialogue with God, and now that He no longer exists one has…

— Imre Kertész

“Kingbitter, as he did frequently nowadays, was standing at his window and looking out onto the street below. This street offered the…

— Imre Kertész

You just sit there and tolerate it, the same way everything in this country is tolerated. Every deception, every lie, every bullet…

— Imre Kertész

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

— Imre Kertész

“Despite all deliberation, sense, insight, and sober reason, I could not fail to recognize within myself the furtive and yet—ashamed as it…

— Imre Kertész

“No" — I could never be another person’s father, fate, god, "No" — it should never happen to another child, what happened…

— Imre Kertész

I look on my life as raw material for my novels: that's just the way I am, and it frees me from…

— Imre Kertész

“I have felt that some sort of awful shame is attached to my name and that I have somehow brought this shame…

— Imre Kertész

“Kurti had believed in politics, and politics had deceived him, the way politics deceives everyone.”

— Imre Kertész

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

— Imre Kertész

There's just one revolution that I can take seriously, and that's a police revolution.

— Imre Kertész

I refuse to adapt or integrate myself.

— Imre Kertész

“It was not very likely, of course, but then all kinds of things are possible, after all.”

— Imre Kertész