Quotes from Thomas Bernhard

She herself had never had enough money and never enough time and hadn't even been unhappy once, in contrast to those she called refined gentlemen, who always had enough money and enough time and constantly talked about their unhappiness. She

For a long time, there had no longer been any books capable of saving him, but only sentences, individual sentences, from Novalis, for instance, from Montaigne, from Spinoza, or from Pascal, which he had to clutch at from time to time in order not to go under.

He abhorred people who said things that hadn't been thought through, thus he abhorred almost all mankind.

But to go hiking or even to go for a walk in the country—that I can't do. It makes no sense to me at all, I can't commit this sort of nonsense, I won't commit the crime of this nonsense.

Cuando me acuesto, no tengo otro deseo que morir, no despertarme más, pero entonces me despierto otra vez y ese espantoso proceso se repite, se repite en definitiva durante cincuenta años, según él. Si pensamos que, durante cincuenta años, no hemos deseado otra cosa que estar muertos, y que seguimos viviendo aún y no podemos cambiar nada, porque somos totalmente inconsecuentes, según él. Porque somos la miseria misma, la bajeza misma.

she said spontaneously that all well-to-do and rich people are inhuman. But was she human then? I had asked her, to which she gave no answer.

Incredible how rapidly the best relationship, if it is stressed beyond its capacity, wears thin and finally exhausts itself.

But of course it was precisely this destruction process of my beloved Steinway that I had wanted.

Aber irgendwie, irgrendwo ist das Abenteuer weg. Jetzt sucht man Ausflüchte und schreibt halt Stücke oder konstruiert eine Prosa, die die Leute langweilt, weil sie sagen Das ist mir zu blöd, drei Seiten ein Satz.

Aber vor Gericht gehen, das kann ich nicht, sage ich. Man müßte da jeden Tag vor Gericht gehen und wegen allem und jedem vor Gericht gehen und schließlich die ganzen Kräfte, die man hat, mit Gerichtsbarkeiten verschwenden, ein Mensch könne sich leicht sein ganzes Leben lang nur in Prozessen erschöpfen, die zu führen er immer Anlaß habe. Im Grunde müßte jeder mit jedem andauernd Prozesse führen, sage ich.

Durmadan kendi kabuÄŸumuzun d???na ç?kma deneyi yap?yor, ama bu deneyde baÅŸar?s?z oluyoruz, hep tepetaklak yuvarlan?yoruz, çünkü kendi kabuÄŸumuzun d???na ölüm d???nda ç?kamayaca??m?z? anlamak istemiyoruz.

myself. We constantly portray and judge people only in false terms, we judge them unjustly and portray them meanly, I said to myself, in every instance, no matter how we portray, no matter how we judge them. Such

How we moved from our different points of departure, our positions, toward one single point, the single acceptable point, death.

Whoever can't lough doesn't deserve to be taken seriously

arts, I said, just like that in painting, in literature, I said, even philosophers are ignorant of philosophy. Most artists are ignorant of their art. They have a dilettante's notion of art, remain stuck all their lives in dilettantism, even the most famous artists in the world. We

Everything is what it is, that's all. If we keep attaching meanings and mysteries to everything we perceive, everything we see that is, and to everything that goes on inside us, we are bound to go crazy sooner or later, I thought.

Husbands who have been deceived and lied to and made to look fools have for centuries fled to South America, never to return. It's a tradition that goes back a long way.

because in the end nothing matters all that much , as he also wrote on another slip, and on his last slip he'd written, it's all the same .

We only really face up to ourselves when we are afraid.

The thinking man always finds himself in a gigantic orphanage in which people are continually proving to him that he has no parents.

Instead of committing suicide, people go to work.

It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.

Whatever condition we are in, we must always do what we want to do, and if we want to go on a journey, then we must do so and not worry about our condition, even if it's the worst possible condition, because, if it is, we're finished anyway, whether we go on the journey or not, and it's better to die having made the journey we're been longing for than to be stifled by our longing.

everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death