Quotes from Elfriede Jelinek

The government has once again made the right socially acceptable.

I think isolation is one of the greatest problems, an ever-growing obstacle to political solidarity.

I do not fight against men, but against the system that is sexist.

My training in music and composition then led me to a kind of musical language process in which, for example, the sound of the words I play with has to expose their true meaning against their will so to speak.

Very few women wait for Mr. Right. Most women take the first and worst Mr. Wrong.

I associate the metaphor of sport with war. The unrest in the former Yugoslavia, after all, started with a football match that then became charged in nationalist ways and ended in violence.

Work restores humankind and all its attributes to the savage animal condition that was its original intended state.

Strictly speaking, there are no holidays for art; art pursues you everywhere, and that's just fine with the artist.

Art and order, the relatives that refuse to relate.

The smaller a group, the easier it is for more people to argue and enter into discussions. The U.S. is vast. It's too large. The intellectuals hide out in enclaves, in big cities or universities, like a bunch of chickens hiding from a fox.

A woman who becomes famous through her work reduces her erotic value. A woman is permitted to chat or babble, but speaking in public with authority is still the greatest transgression.

I do not want to have the feeling of writing 'for eternity', so to speak.

Internet is exemplary for me. I do not want to have the feeling of writing 'for eternity,' so to speak. The fleetingness of the Internet has therefore become very attractive to me.