Quotes from Herta Muller

Ceausescu was mad, and he made half of Romania mad. I'm mad because of him.

Through writing, one experiences something different to what one experiences with the five senses one has because language is a different metier.

Happiness may perhaps be shared. But not luck, sadly.

As a child, I perceived my mother as an old woman.

I am a broken person.

Suffering doesn't improve human beings, does it?

Romanian is a very beautiful, sensual, poetic language.

The more words we are allowed to take, the freer we become. If our mouth is banned, then we attempt to assert ourselves through gestures, even objects. They are more difficult to interpret, and take time before they arouse suspicion.

I believe that literature always goes precisely there where the damage to a person has been done.

If I don't belong because of what I think and because of my opinions, then so be it. What can one do about it? One can't bend over backwards or pretend to be someone else just to belong. And in any case, it doesn't work. Once you no longer belong, it's over.

Language is so different from life. How am I supposed to fit the one into the other? How can I bring them together?

Whatever I read went under my skin. I almost devoured the literature, which became like a road to discovery.

I learned Romanian very late, when I was fifteen, in town, and I wanted to learn it. I like the language very much.

Writing itself does not know what it looks like while one is doing it, only when it's finished.

My first book, 'Nadirs,' was very important for me. I'll leave its literary worth for others to judge. But its publication in Berlin in 1984 gave me protection. As did the awards it won. The Romanian secret police could no longer treat me and my friends as though we were completely cut off from the rest of the world. And we no longer felt cut off.

I write in order to bear witness to life.

Once upon a time they had some bad luck, and they blame everything on that.

In Romanian society, I am not particularly well-liked. I don't often receive invitations.

One is either destroyed by adapting or for refusing to.

My mother tongue is German.

In this county, we had to walk, eat, sleep and love in fear.

I find any kind of 'organizing' very difficult. And that has irksome consequences when it comes to books, since I've often wound up buying books twice because I couldn't find what I already have in all my mess.

I never wanted to be a writer.

What can't be said can be written. Because writing is a silent act, a labor from the head to the hand.