Quotes from Fleur Jaeggy

I still thought that to get something you had to go straight for your goal whereas it is only distractions, uncertainty, distance that bring us closer to our targets, and then it is the targets which strike us.

Inside, a mother superior, ethereal, delicate, who took me under her wing. She caressed me with her slender, soft hands, she sat next to me as if I were a friend. One day she disappeared. In her place arrived a buxom Swiss from Canton Uri. It's common knowledge that a new leader will hate the predecessors' favourites. A boarding school is like a harem.

Once when I was eight years old my grandmother asked me, what will you do when you grow up? And I answered, I want to die. I want to die when I grow up. I want to die soon. And I think my sister really liked that answer.

What are the girls thinking of? At least half are nostalgic for death, and for a temple, and for all of those clothes.

The wind wrinkled the dark lake and my thoughts as it swept on the clouds, chopped them up with its hatchet; between them you could just glimpse the Last Judgement, finding each of us guilty of nothing.

I've found it hard sometimes to turn my back on the natural call of the waves, and I don't envy the temperament of vultures or of stars. The blinds at my windows have been fluttering for fifty years.

People, nearly all of them, don't know how to worry about others without being presumptuous, with finesse, with modesty. They think they know. My sister thought she knew. Knew the human race. . . . Knowledge doesn't know. But that's something few understand.

The bell rings, we get up. The bell rings again, we go to bed. We retire to our rooms; we saw life pass by beneath our windows, observed it in books and on our walks, watched the seasons change. It was always a reflection, a reflection that seemed to freeze on our windowsills... We imagined the world. What else can we imagine now if not our own deaths? The bell rings and it's all over.

His eyes stayed open imperiously. No one could close his eyelids. The room smoked of grief.

Cuando se está allí dentro, una imagina cosas grandiosas sobre el mundo, y cuando sale, a veces desearía volver a oír el sonido de la campana.

But one does have to give words some credit. One has to at least pretend that they more or less resemble their meaning. Their shady meaning.

Children lose interest in their parents when they are left. They are not sentimental. They are passionate and cold. [...] They learn to pretend. And pretense becomes the most active, the realest part, alluring as dreams. It takes place of what we think is real. - pg. 11-12

You can call me a thief if you like, a thief of ceremonies

On a bench a toad kept him company: "A slaughterhouse aesthetic must exist.

A scent of celery settled over me. Here in Amsterdam the way fish is displayed is so considerate, but the garlic isn't very white.

La vida para mí se hacía demasiado larga. La literatura, por sí sola, no me distraía.

Hemos imaginado el mundo. ¿Qué otra cosa puede imaginarse si no es la propia muerte? El sonido de una campana y todo ha terminado.

Our minds are a series of graves in a wall. Our non-entities are all there when the register is called, gluttonous creatures; sometimes they fly up like vultures to hide the faces of those we loved. A multitude of faces dwell in the graves, a rich pasturage.

Desde el día en que entramos en el Bausler Institut no hicimos más que pensar en el día que saldríamos.

I knew Frédérique wouldn't write. But I persevered in the pleasure of taking my sadness to the limit, the way one does with some practical joke. The pleasure of disappointment. It wasn't new to me. I had been relishing it ever since I was eight years old, a boarder in my first, religious, school. And perhaps they were the best years, I thought. Those years of discipline. There was a kind of elation, faint but constant throughout all those days of discipline, the sweet days of discipline.

People, nearly all of them, don't know how to worry about others without being presumptuous, with finesse, with modesty. They think they know.

Todavía hoy no logro expresar con palabras que me había enamorado de Frédérique; es una frase muy fácil de decir.

Er verließ seinen Vater, Witwer seit wenigen Stunden, um, wie er sagte, "Statuen kaufen" zu gehen, und dabei schien er zu scherzen. Er war den figürlichen Nachbildungen des Schmerzes und der Ruhe schon seit früher Kindheit geneigt gewesen, seit seiner Kindheit war er ein Sammler, die Museen waren in ihm; seine Statuen waren seine Spielzeuge, ein Vorrecht derjenigen, die von Geburt an verloren sind und an ihrem Ende debütieren.

C'è qualcosa di assoluto e di imprendibile in certi esseri, sembra una lontananza dal mondo, dai vivi, ma sembra anche il segno di chi subisce un potere che non conosciamo.