Quotes from Thomas Bernhard

No se le ha ocurrido que los hombres viven en cementerios? ¿Que las grandes ciudades son grandes cementerios? ¿Las pequeñas ciudades cementerios más pequeños? ¿Los pueblos cementerios más pequeños todavía? ¿Que una cama es un ataúd? ¿Que los vestidos son mortajas? ¿Todo ensayos para la muerte? La existencia entera un eterno ensayar para la capilla ardiente y el entierro.

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

Lebenslängliche Theaterkerkerhaft ohne die geringste Begnadigungsmöglichkeit Und doch niemals aufgegeben Strafanstalt als Theater Zehntausende Insassen die alle keine Aussicht auf Begnadigung haben Nur die Todesstrafe ist ihnen allen sicher

But the city doesn't grab anyone under the arms: on the contrary, it constantly seeks to fend off the unfortunate people who repair to it in search of a career, to destroy them and annihilate them.

For the thinking person there is no such thing as idleness... By contrast, one might say that the thinking person is at his most active when he is supposedly doing nothing. This is beyond the comprehension of genuinely idle people

Die beste Methode, sich von einem Schriftstellerwerk zu befreien, das einen gleich in was für einer Hinsicht nicht mehr in Ruhe läßt, sei es, weil man es am höchsten schätzt, sei es, daß man es haßt, ist, seinen Erzeuger kennenzulernen. Wir gehen zum Erzeuger eines literarischen Werkes und sind es los, habe ich zu Gambetti gesagt.

The thinking person who is idle appears as the greatest threat to those for whom idleness means simply doing nothing, who actually do nothing when they are idle.

He was the only world-famous piano virtuoso who abhorred his public and also actually withdrew definitively from this abhorred public.

The loser was a born loser, I thought, he has always been the loser and if we observe the people around us carefully we notice that these people consist almost entirely of losers like him, I said to myself, of

I want to see him clearly again with the help of these notes, these scraps of memory, which are meant to clarify and recall to mind not only the hopeless situation of my friend but also my own hopelessness at the time, for just as Paul's life had once again run into an impasse, so mine too had run into an impasse, or rather been driven into one. I am bound to say that, like Paul, I had once more overstated and overrated my existence, that I had exploited it to excess.

Sometimes we need someone, sometimes no one, and sometimes we need someone and no one.

Life is the purest, clearest, darkest, most crystalline form of hopelessness Ã¢â'¬Â¦ There is only one way to go, through the snow and ice into despair; past the adultery of reason.

Wenn wir einen geliebten Menschen verlieren, behalten wir doch immer ein Kleidungsstück von ihm wenigstens solange wir den Geruch des Verlorenen noch an ihm wahrnehmen können und tatsächlich bis in unserem Tod hinein, weil wir auch dann noch glauben, sein Geruch machte uns dieses Kleidungsstück gegenwärtig, wenn das auch längst nur mehr noch nichts ist als Einbildung.

We're constantly correcting, and correcting ourselves, most rigorously, because we recognize at every moment that we did it all wrong (wrote it, thought it, made it all wrong), acted all wrong, how we acted all wrong, that everything to this point in time is a falsification, so we correct this falsification, and then we again correct the correction of this falsification and we correct the result of the correction of a correction andsoforth.

Cu to?ii suferim de megalomanie,ca s? nu trebuiasc? s? pl?tim ve?nica noastr? sibmediocritate.

It was inconceivable now... To think that I once loved this woman Jeannie Billroth, whom I have hated for the last twenty years, and who, also, hates me. People come together and form a friendship, and for years they not only endure this friendship, but allow it to become more and more intense until it finally snaps, and from then on they hate each other for decades, sometimes for the rest of their lives.

There is nothing more dreadful than having to go walking on one's own on Monday.

To wake up one day and be Steinway and Glen in One... Glen Steinway, Steinway Glen, all for Bach.

for everyone says something repeatedly and is misunderstood, this is the only point where everybody understands everybody else, he said, I thought. One

I doubted whether this work was truly worth something and was thinking of destroying it upon my return, everything we write down, if we leave it for a while and start reading it from the beginning, naturally becomes unbearable and we won't rest until we've destroyed it again, I thought. Next

To be an artist in Austria means for most people being compliant to the state, whatever its political complexion, and letting oneself be supported by it for the term of one's natural life.

El lenguaje es inútil cuando se trata de decir la verdad, de comunicar cosas, sólo permite al que escribe la aproximación, siempre, únicamente, una aproximación desesperada y, por ello, dudosa al objeto, el lenguaje sólo reproduce una autenticidad falsificada, una deformación espantosa, por mucho que el que escribe se esfuerce, las palabras lo aplastan todo contra el suelo y lo dislocan todo y convierten la verdad total en mentira sobre el papel.

Ale moje myÅ›lenie staÅ'o siÄ™ ju? od dawna straszliwie niekonsekwentnÄ… formÄ… bólu gÅ'owy, formÄ… bólu, który sporadycznie pojawia siÄ™ tu i tam, gdy czÅ'owiek caÅ'Ä… swojÄ… naturÄ™ wysila przez dÅ'u?szy czas ponad miarÄ™, oczywiÅ›cie choroba umysÅ'owa, którÄ… muszÄ™ okreÅ›li? jako zdecydowane przeciwieÅ"stwo tÄ™poty.

The teacher who isn't a genius is made into a teacher of genius by the student of genius at this precise moment for a very precise time period, I thought. But