Quotes from Thomas Bernhard

Reading is still the most bearable of all forms of disgust.

The forest, the virgin forest, the life of a woodcutter—that has always been my ideal.

Alles ist jeden Tag tagtäglich eine Wiederholung von Wiederholungen.

I hate nothing more profoundly than the multitude... the accumulation of people, the concentration of vileness and mindlessness and lies. Much as we should love each individual, I believe, so we hate the mass.

I took a few steps toward the kitchen window although I'd already realized I couldn't look through the kitchen window because, as already mentioned, it's covered with filth from top to bottom. Austrian kitchen windows are all totally filthy and we can't look through them and naturally it's to our greatest advantage, I thought, not to be able to look through them because then we find ourselves staring into the mouth of catastrophe, into the chaos of Austrian kitchen filth.

Our libraries are so to speak prisons where we've locked up our intellectual giants, naturally Kant has been put in solitary confinement, like Nietzsche, like Schopenhauer, like Pascal, like Voltaire, like Montaigne, all the real giants have been put in solitary confinement, all the others in mass confinement, but everyone for ever and ever, my friend, for all time and unto eternity, that's the truth.

It is not necessary to read all of Goethe or all of Kant, it is not necessary to read all of Schopenhauer; a few pages of Werther, a few pages of Elective Affinities and we know more in the end about the two books than if we had read them from beginning to end, which would anyway deprive us of the purest enjoyment.

In the end we remember all the students we've gone to school with and invite them to our homes only to find out that we no longer have the least thing in common with them, I thought.

Wenn wir nicht wüssten, wieviele Millionen von außerordentlichen Talenten an jedem Tage in aller Welt verkümmern müssen, weil sie von keinem aufgehoben und angepackt und entwickelt und schließlich zu den höchsten Höhen hinauf entwickelt werden!

All this time I've been talking about the human sciences and don't even know what these human sciences are, don't have the slightest clue, he said, I thought, been talking about philosophy and don't have a clue about philosophy, been talking about existence and don't have a clue about it, he said. Our starting point is always that we don't know anything about anything and don't even have a clue about it, he said

Years later the world confirmed my judgment, but this only pained me, like everything confirmed by the newspapers. We exist, we don't have any other choice, Glenn

if that handsome fellow were a cripple he wouldn't repel me, but he isn't a cripple, he is that handsome fellow, so he repels me...

Es gibt ja nur Gescheitertes. In dem wir wenigstens den Willen zum Scheitern haben, kommen wir vorwärts und wir müssen in jeder Sache und in allem und in jedem immer wieder wenigstens den Willen zum Scheitern haben, wenn wir noch schon sehr früh zugrunde gehen wollen, was tatsächlich nicht die Absicht sein kann, mit welcher wir da sind.

The question is not: Can I write about Wittgenstein. The question is: Can I be Wittgenstein for one moment without destroying either Wittgenstein or myself… Wittgenstein is a summons to which I cannot respond... Thus, I do not write about Wittgenstein not because I can't write about him, but rather because I cannot answer him.

El arte, ese gran niño nacido muerto.

We see so much sadness if we care to look.

The facts are always frightening, and in all of us fear of the facts is constantly at work, constantly being fuelled; but this morbid fear must not lead us to conceal the facts and so to falsify the whole of human history -- which is of course part of natural history -- and pass it on in falsified form just because it is customary to do so, when we know that all history is falsified and always transmitted in falsified form.

Toda idea, al fin y al cabo, es una idea demencial.

Wenn Man an den Tod denkt, alles ist lächerlich. (When one thinks of death, everything is ridiculous).

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.

He wanted to be an artist, an artist of life wasn't enough for him, although precisely this concept provides everything we need to be happy if we think about it.

I'd always cared extremely little for public opinion because I was always obsessed with my own opinion and hence had no time at all for the public's.

Ich kenne die Natur überhaupt nicht und ich hasse sie, denn sie bringt mich um.

Everything about everybody is nothing but diversion from death.