Quotes from Harry Mulisch

Why should "Honor thy father and thy mother" be a commandment, and "Honor thy child" not?

In een paroxysme van kleuren ging de hemel zich inmiddels te buiten aan een zonsondergang, zoals die in Europa alleen door een krankzinnige belichtingstechnicus verzonnen kon worden, waarop onmiddelijk ontslag zou volgen

Al het oude was eens nieuw, en al het nieuwe zal eens oud zijn. Het alleroudste is het heden, want er is nooit iets anders geweest dan het heden. Nooit heeft iemand in het verleden geleefd, en in de toekomst leeft ook niemand.

Besides, whoever keeps the future in front of him and the past at his back is doing something else that's hard to imagine. For the image implies that events somehow already exist in the future, reach the present at a determined moment, and finally come to rest in the past. But nothing exists in the future; it is empty; one might die at any minute. Therefore such a person has his face toward the void, whereas it is the past behind him that is visible, stored in the memory.

The oldest thing of all is the present, because there's never been anything else but present. No one has ever lived in the past, and no one lives in the future, either.

In a world full of war, famine, oppression, deceit, monotony, what—apart from the eternal innocence of animals—offers an image of hope? A mother with a newborn child in her arms? The child may end up as a murderer or a murder victim, so that the hopeful image is a prefiguration of a pietà: a mother with her newly dead child on her lap.

Reality wasn't a syllogism like "Socrates is a man—all men are mortal—hence Socrates is mortal," but more like "Helga is a human being—all telephone booths have been vandalized—hence Helga must die." Or like: "Hitler is a human being—all Jews are animals—hence all Jews must die.

The world was a soup and thought was generally a fork: it seldom resulted in a good meal.

Wie het gedaan heeft, heeft het gedaan en niet iemand anders.

The process of putting Haarlem behind him resembled the changes a man goes through when he divorces. He takes a girl friend to forget his wife, but just doing that prolongs the connection with the wife. Possibly things will work out only with the next girl friend - although the third one has the best chance. Boundaries have to be continuously sealed off, but it's a hopeless job, fore everything touches everything else in this world. A beginning never disappears, not even with the ending.

If you believe we shouldn't have done it, then you also believe that, in the light of history, the human race shouldn't have existed. Because then all the love and happiness and goodness in this world can't outweigh the life of a single child.