Elfriede Jelinek Quotes & Sayings

It is not enough ... simply to surrender oneself brainlessly to love, when it knocks at the door, one must also calculate because of later life, which does sometimes follow. — Elfriede Jelinek

He lies like a book. And he reads a lot of books. — Elfriede Jelinek

Very few women wait for Mr. Right. Most women take the first and worst Mr. Wrong. — Elfriede Jelinek

Literature that keeps employing new linguistic and formal modes of expression to draft a panorama of society as a whole while at the same time exposing it, tearing the masks from its face - for me that would be deserving of an award. — Elfriede Jelinek

Women age early, and their mistake is not knowing where to hide all the time that lies behind them so that no one sees it. What are they to do, devour it like the umbilical cords of their children? Hell and damnation! — Elfriede Jelinek

De Sade says you must commit crimes. In using the word crime we're adopting the consensus term, though among ourselves we would not describe any of our actions as such. We need the universally valid norm to get a kick out of our own extremeness. We are monsters, even if we disguise ourselves as ordinary people. We are the children of ordinary people, but we are not content with that. Inwardly we are consumed with wickedness, outwardly we are grammar school pupils. — Elfriede Jelinek

Her body is one big refrigerator, where Art is well stored. — Elfriede Jelinek

There are no distinctions at all any more, as far as entertainments are concerned, it's big and beautiful everywhere where we are. It would be a great help to us, if we could be everywhere at the same time. And here it is already, your entertainment! — Elfriede Jelinek

Every day, a piece of music, a short story, or a poem dies because its existence is no longer justified in our time. And things that were once considered immortal have become mortal again, no one knows them anymore. Even though they deserve to survive. — Elfriede Jelinek

I have the feeling it will influence my future writing to the extent that without any material worries I could develop a greater ease, even lightheartedness, in my writing. — Elfriede Jelinek

Sunday, the day for the language of leisure. — Elfriede Jelinek

I cannot stand public attention, I just can't. Of course, if I may I might write something instead. — Elfriede Jelinek

After all, people with a herd instinct hold mediocrity in high esteem. They praise it as having great value. They believe they are strong because they are the majority. — Elfriede Jelinek

You have often seen in the cinema, erich, haven't you, that between extraordinary people extraordinary things like for example extraordinary love can arise. so we only have to be extraordinary and see what happens. — Elfriede Jelinek

The mob not only grabs hold of art without being entitled to do so, but it also enters the artist. It takes up residence inside the artist and smashes a few holes in the wall, windows to the outer world: The mob wants to be seen. — Elfriede Jelinek

Eroding solidarity paradoxically makes a society more susceptible to the construction of substitute collectives and fascisms of all kinds. — Elfriede Jelinek

For Erika, the most profound evidence of love is failure. — Elfriede Jelinek

Anna despises two classes of people: first, those who own their own homes and have cars and families, and second, everybody else. Constantly she is on the verge of exploding. With rage. A pool of pure red. The pool is filled with speechlessness that talks away at her nonstop. — Elfriede Jelinek

I only enjoy what I can see, because I don't feel anything. For example, your new wallpaper. I like it and it can stay, it's quiet and it keeps quiet at least. Luckily I don't have to feel it, just see it. — Elfriede Jelinek

Perfectly happy momma goes out into the fields. she eavesdrops on herself, in case somewhere deep inside a melody rings out or a blackbird sings, but all that she hears, is only the cancer, which saws and eats away at her. — Elfriede Jelinek

Erika glides down into the warmth, the body-warm brook of shame, a bath in which one submerges cautiously because the water is rather dirty. — Elfriede Jelinek

Most expensive originals have cheap imitations. — Elfriede Jelinek

Vice is basically the love of failure. — Elfriede Jelinek

Many young people are still driven to art, as in olden times. Most of them are driven by their parents, who know nothing about art - only that it exists. — Elfriede Jelinek

Everyone wants to look for something of their own, a house of their own, a child of their own, a partner of their own, entirely for themselves alone. No one is satisfied with a room of their own any more. — Elfriede Jelinek

If you are sitting on a felled tree in a pine forest enjoying the sunshine you can easily forget what time it is. Not that you could forget your gold watch, just the time of day. — Elfriede Jelinek

After all, when you take a walk you're after solitude, and if the solitude won't come to you, you must go to it. — Elfriede Jelinek

Only the TV sounds are real, they are the actual events. All the people around here experience the same things at the same time, except for some loner, who switches to the educational channel. — Elfriede Jelinek

Simple people ... listen to music with their hearts and enjoy it more than those who are spoiled, jaded, blase. — Elfriede Jelinek

She will prolong her life by the length of her story, even though time will wear on inexorably as she tells it, thus depriving her of the chance to have a new experience. — Elfriede Jelinek

Only he who loves and is loved for his own sake can be happy, and what produces that happiness is not so much the sense of sexual communion as of two people being together ... the sexual act viewed as a whole probably affords less happiness than a totally ordinary kiss or often indeed one simple word from the one you love. — Elfriede Jelinek

As is said about most writers: on the one hand all I ever did from when I was a child was read, and I was a loner, which was furthered by my parents and my upbringing. — Elfriede Jelinek

Is writing the gift of curling up, of curling up with reality? One would so love to curl up, of course, but what happens to me then? What happens to those, who don't really know reality at all? It's so very dishevelled. No comb, that could smooth it down. The writers run through it and despairingly gather together their hair into a style, which promptly haunts them at night. Something's wrong with the way one looks. The beautifully piled up hair can be chased out of its home of dreams again, but can anyway no longer be tamed. Or hangs limp once more, a veil before a face, no sooner than it could finally be subdued. Or stands involuntarily on end in horror at what is constantly happening. It simply won't be tidied up. It doesn't want to. — Elfriede Jelinek

Stealing isn't so easy, often it's hard work, otherwise we'd all be doing it. — Elfriede Jelinek

Trust is fine, but control is better. — Elfriede Jelinek

I do not want to have the feeling of writing 'for eternity', so to speak. — Elfriede Jelinek

My plays are made up of long monologues, which is similar to prose working with the language. — Elfriede Jelinek

Art and order, the relatives that refuse to relate. — Elfriede Jelinek

The government has once again made the right socially acceptable. — Elfriede Jelinek

No art can possibly comfort HER then, even though art is credited with so many things, especially an ability to offer solace. Sometimes, of course, art creates the suffering in the first place. — Elfriede Jelinek

The problem is that it is difficult to translate. — Elfriede Jelinek

The Ph.D is one of the chosen who know that some things can never be fathomed, no matter how hard you try. What good are explanations? There is no possibility of explaining how such a work [Mozart's Requiem, in the instance] could ever have come into being. (The same holds true for certain poems, which should not be analyzed either.) — Elfriede Jelinek

Let me write it down, quite unambiguously: paper could cut me open as a paper knife slits paper. I'd like to meet the person who could make a new woman of me out of the things I say. — Elfriede Jelinek

There is too much too much too much of everything. We have enough too. More than enough. We've had enough. — Elfriede Jelinek

Seek and you shall find the repulsive things you secretly hope to find. — Elfriede Jelinek

Money never goes out of fashion. — Elfriede Jelinek

The moment workers can afford too little they rebel. The last time this was a real danger was 1950. Communists took advantage of supply problems and stirred up gullible people against their very own country. — Elfriede Jelinek

My training in music and composition then led me to a kind of musical language process in which, for example, the sound of the words I play with has to expose their true meaning against their will so to speak. — Elfriede Jelinek

Strictly speaking, there are no holidays for art; art pursues you everywhere, and that's just fine with the artist. — Elfriede Jelinek

I, however, have really never been anywhere yet, not because some sins or other could wrap themselves around me there, but because I'd rather sin at home, where God even announces the weather to me in advance on TV, slowly, so that I can write it down, in case it's worth the proper guilt. Sinning is enough, there's no need for surprises as well. — Elfriede Jelinek

I would gladly do it but I am suffering from social phobia. I cannot manage being in a crowd of people. — Elfriede Jelinek

The Man's rage is huge. Moil and toil and turmoil, he's coming to the boil, time to cool the heat with a jet of foam. He wants the woman to take off her clothes right away. So that she measures up to his size. He wants to conduct his lightning into her. Not that his wildfire could ever be tamed by her, and anyway he has plenty of matches. To create himself anew, as often as need be. — Elfriede Jelinek

Submission to something you didn't preach yourself is no good, I quote. Because Man must burst his ridiculous bonds, which consist of what is supposedly current reality with a prospect of a future reality of scarcely any greater value. — Elfriede Jelinek

It could draw from a greater reservoir of freedom. The irony could develop an even greater ease. — Elfriede Jelinek

I think isolation is one of the greatest problems, an ever-growing obstacle to political solidarity. — Elfriede Jelinek

I do not fight against men, but against the system that is sexist. — Elfriede Jelinek

Work restores humankind and all its attributes to the savage animal condition that was its original intended state. — Elfriede Jelinek

Only yesterday an express train tore up a whole flock of sheep not far from here, over forty dead animals, flung through the air like cotton-wool balls, the good shepherd fallen asleep drunk somewhere, the dog in the field alone, not a hope. Now the shepherd has to bear joint responsibility for the whole loss, or don't you think he bears a responsibility, dear television audience, write and let us know what you think, it's your views that count. — Elfriede Jelinek

The first thing a proprietor learns, and painfully at that, is: Trust is fine, but control is better. — Elfriede Jelinek

Ah, lust! How one would like to make it the cornerstone of self! But I wouldn't go ahead and build on it if I were you. — Elfriede Jelinek

Love points the way. Desire is its ignorant advisor. — Elfriede Jelinek

Characters on stage should be flat, like clothes in a fashion show: what you get should be no more than what you see. Psychological realism is repulsive, because it allows us to escape unpalatable reality by taking shelter in the "luxuriousness" of personality, losing ourselves in the depth of individual character. The writer's task is to block this manoeuvre, to chase us off to a point from which we can view the horror with a dispassionate eye. — Elfriede Jelinek

The ignorant majority, which does however possess one thing in abundance: It is raring for a fight. — Elfriede Jelinek