Quotes from Herta Muller

Quase nunca choro. Não sou mais forte do que aqueles que ficam de olhos molhados, sou mais fraco. Eles arriscam. Quando se tem só pele e osso, sentimentos são coragem. Eu prefiro ser cobarde.

O tédio é a paciência do medo.

Except you're not allowed to talk about hunger when you're hungry. Hunger is not a bunk or a bed frame, otherwise it could be measured. Hunger is not an object.

Cuando callamos, resultamos desagradables ... cuando hablamos, quedamos en ridículo.

The summer is cruel to its leaves, the fall to its colors, the winter to us.

Llevo un equipaje de silencio. Me he rodeado de un silencio tan hondo y duradero que nunca acierto a abrirme con las palabras. Cuando hablo, solamente me cierro de otra manera.

Better to be at home in room and garden with ugly people than belong to strangers.

T?cerea nu-i o pauz? în vorbire, ci o treab? în sine.

The Romanian farmers eat and drink too much because they have too little, said Liviu, and they talk too little because they know too much. And they don't trust strangers don't have any gold teeth. Strangers here are very much alone, said Liviu.

For me, each journey to Romania is also a journey into another time, in which I never knew which events in my life were coincidence and which were staged. This is why I have, in every public statement I have made, demanded access to the secret files kept on me which, under various pretexts, have invariably been denied me.

Silence is also a form of speaking.

If you live with death threats, you need friends. So you have to risk that they might spy on you.

It was only against my mother's will that I attended the preparatory high school in the city. She wanted me to become a seamstress in the village. She knew that if I moved to the city, I would become corrupted. And I was. I started to read books.

We didn't have any books at home. Not even children's books or fairy tales. The only 'fantastic' stories came from religion class. And I took them all very literally, that God sees everything, and so I felt I was always being watched. Or that dead people were in Heaven right over our village.

Only the demented would not have raised their hands in the great hall. They had exchanged fear for insanity".