Quotes from Thomas Bernhard

Only when I am by seawater can I truly breathe, to say nothing of my ability to think.

We publish only to satisfy out craving for fame; there's no other motive except the even baser one of making money.

everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death

Very often we write down a sentence too early, then another too late; what we have to do is write it down at the proper time, otherwise it's lost.

perfidious society masturbators

I had to spend my entire childhood in the Altensam dungeon like an inmate doing time for no comprehensible reason, for a crime he can't remember committing, a judicial error probably.

You are never truly together with one you love until the person in question is dead and actually inside you.

All of living is nothing but a fervid attempt to move closer together.

Everyone is a virtuoso on his own instrument, but together they add up to an intolerable cacophony.

The anger and the brutality against everything can readily from one hour to the next be transformed into its opposite.

Träume und Märchen waren ihr eigentlicher Lebensinhalt, dachte ich jetzt. Deshalb hat sie sich auch umgebracht, dachte ich, weil ein Mensch, der nur Träume und Märchen sich zu seinem Lebensinhalt gemacht hat, in dieser Welt nicht überleben kann, nicht überleben darf, dachte ich.

we ask: Why suicide? We search for reasons, causes, and so on.... We follow the course of the life he has now so suddenly terminated as far back as we can. For days we are preoccupied with the question: Why suicide? We recollect details. And yet we must say that everything in the suicide's life- for now we know that all his life he was a suicide, led a suicide's existence- is part of the cause, the reason, for his suicide.

All of living is nothing but a fervid attempt to move closer together.

I know nothing about nature. I hate nature, because it is killing me.

What is ridiculous about human beings, Doctor,' the prince said, 'is actually their total incapacity to be ridiculous

We study better in hostile surroundings than in hospitable ones, a student is always well advised to choose a hostile place of study rather than a hospitable one, for the hospitable place will rob him of the better part of his concentration for his studies, the hostile place on the other hand will allow him total concentration, since he must concentrate on his studies to avoid despairing

Hotel Waldhaus We had no luck with the weather and the guests at our table were repellent in every respect. They even spoiled Nietzsche for us. Even after they had had a fatal car accident and had been laid out in the church in Sils, we still hated them.

All my life I have had the utmost admiration for suicides. I have always considered them superior to me in every way.

What can you do. You get a name, you're called 'Thomas Bernhard', and it stays that way for the rest of your life. And if at some point you go for a walk in the woods, and someone takes a photo of you, then for the next eighty years you're always walking in the woods. There's nothing you can do about it.

Wir können uns einreden, dass wir mit einem Buch nicht allein sind, wie wir uns einreden können, dass wir mit einem Menschen nicht allein sind.

I don't belong to the masses, I've been against the masses all my life, and I'm not in favour of dogs.

Time destroys everything we do, whatever it is.

Lawyers make nothing but confusion... A lawyer is an instrument of the devil. In general, he's a fiendish idiot, banking on the stupidity of people much more stupid than himself, and by God he's always right.

A criminal is undoubtedly a poor soul, who is punished for his poverty.