Quotes from Herta Muller

Es gibt keine passenden Wörter fürs Hungerleiden. Ich muss dem Hunger heute noch zeigen, dass ich ihm entkommen bin. Ich esse buchstäblich das Leben selbst, seit ich nicht mehr hungern muss. Ich bin eingesperrt in den Geschmack des Essens, wenn ich esse. Ich esse seit meiner Heimkehr aus dem Lager, seit sechzig Jahren, gegen das Verhungern.

They have good streets here, but everything's so spread out. I am not used to asphalt, it makes my feet hurt, and my brain. I get as tired here in a day as I do back home in a year. That's not home, other people live there now, I wrote to Mother. Home is where you are now... And Mother wrote back to me: How would you know where home is? The place where Toni the clockmaker tends the graves, that's home.

Se, nesta vida, me quisessem de novo deportar, uma coisa eu saberia: há coisas primeiras que já querem as segundas, mesmo contra o nosso querer. O que é que me compele a manter estas ligações. Porque quero eu, à noite, ter direito à minha miséria. Porque é que não consigo ser livre. Porque obrigo o campo de trabalho a obedecer-me. Saudades de casa. Como se eu precisasse.

Czyta?, LESEN, i ?y?, LEBEN, ró?ni? si? tylko jedn? liter?.

Tudo o que está para vir, já aí está.

She was never seen rummaging through the kitchen waste behind the mess hall. She ate what could be found in the yard and on the factory grounds. Seeds, leaves, and flowers in the weeds. And all kinds of insects—worms and caterpillars, maggots and beetles, spiders and snails.

Olha como chora, alguma coisa nele extravasou. Pensei muitas vezes nesta frase. Depois, escrevi-a numa folha em branco. Voltei a riscar, voltei a escrever. Quando a folha encheu, rasguei-a do caderno. A isto chama-se memória.

The bread court does not deliberate, it punishes. It knows no mitigation, it needs no legal code. It is a law unto itself, because the hunger angel is also a thief who steals the brain. Bread justice has no prologue or epilogue, it is only here and now. Totally transparent, or totally mysterious. In any case, the violence meted out by bread justice is different from hungerless violence. You cannot approach the bread court with conventional morality.

I needed to find some work to escape the silence. I was twenty-two years old but had no training. Is nailing crates a profession—I was back to fetching and carrying.

The tin-sheep and wooden-melon proletariat produced their papers and named their places of work. The madman with the white beard plucked at the sleeve of the policemen, opened up his folded handkerchief, and said: professor of philosophy.

I was all wrapped up, the streetlamps and lighted windows were glittering, the frost bit into our faces, our lips felt like frozen crusts of bread, our cheeks as smooth and cold as porcelain. Sky and street were nothing but snow, we were driving into a great big snowball.

Windisch closes his eyes. He feels his eyes. He feels his eyeballs in his hands. His eyes without a face.

The soldiers lie in the grey morning. Thickets separate them. They are on manoeuvres. They are at war with their hands, their eyes, their foreheads.

Îmi tot spun mereu c? am pu?ine sentimente. Dac? pun ceva la inim?, e doar pe jum?tate. Nu plâng aproape niciodat?. Nu-s mai puternic decât cei cu ochii umezi, ci mai slab. Ei au îndr?zneala. Când ai ajuns doar piele ?i oase, e curajos s? ai sentimente.

I don't need a day pass, I have the camp, and the camp has me. All I need is a bunk and Fenya's bread and my tin bowl. I don't even need Leo Auberg.

Yo miro a la abuela, no su cara, sino sus manos. Todos los tendones están tensos, ya no hay carne en esas manos, tan sólo huesos y piel reseca. La muerte podría inmovilizarlas en cualquier momento, pero aún se mueven cuando reza, y el rosario susurra entre ellas.

They all fired into the air, no doubt about it, said the old man with the fur cap, but it was the air that happened to be in people's lung.

Het landschap van onze kindertijd laat sporen achter voor onze blik op het landschap gedurende de volgende jaren.

Ik weet niet hoe woorden dat tot stand brengen, dat de zin opglinstert en veel meer zegt dan de inhoud van zijn woorden.

Als er overal wordt gelogen, als je eigen ervaring zo tegengesteld is aan de officiële waarheid en op die manier van je wordt afgepakt, moet je wel verstommen.

Das Schreiben zähmt das Gelebte.

Voor de controleurs van de heimat en de garandeerders van het wij-gevoel geldt maar één ding : het moet zijn zoals het altijd is geweest, opdat het zo blijft.

I wanted to work out a trade with things that aren't alive but aren't dead either. I wanted to make an emergency exchange, trading my body for the horizon line above and the dusty roads on the earth below. I wanted to borrow their endurance, exist without my body, and when the worst was over, slip back into my body and reappear in my fufaika. This had nothing to do with dying, quite the opposite.

Der Mann ist ein schwarzer Faden, der in die Pflanzen geht. Das schlagende Gras hebt ihn über die Erde.