Quotes from Danilo Kiš

Ne volim ljude koji se izvla?e iz sveta kao kišne gliste. Bez ožiljka i bez ogrebotine. Komedijaši. Agnosceo veteris vestigia flamme. Ožiljkom jednim oboga?en.

Kad budu svi roktali svojim svinjskim srcima, poslednji koji ?e još gledati ljudskim o?ima i ose?ati ljudskim srcem bi?e oni kojima ne bejaše strano iskustvo umetnosti.

Istoriju pišu pobednici. Predanja ispreda puk. Književnici fantaziraju. Izvesna je samo smrt.

Mislila sam, kao što ljudi u teškim nevoljama misle, da ?e mi promena mesta pomo?i da zaboravim svoj bol, kao da svoju nesre?u ne nosimo U sebi.

Otela mi je, Igore brate, moju sebi?nost, moje remekdelo!

U svakom mom retku, u svakoj mojoj re?i, u svakoj ta?ki nalaziš se i ti, kao polen.

I wish to live in peace with myself and not with the world.

I dislike people who get out of things unscraped. No scars, no scratches. Agnosceo veteris vestigia flamme. Refined through a scar.

Since childhood, I was afflicted with a sick hypersensitivity, and my imagination quickly turned everything into a memory, too quickly: sometimes one day was enough, or an interval of a few hours, or a routine change of place, for an everyday event with a lyrical value that I did not sense at the time, to become suddenly adorned with a radiant echo, the echo ordinarily reserved only for those memories which have been standing for many years in the powerful fixative of lyrical oblivion.

Na kraju - kažem na kraju, a trebalo je da pro?u godine patnji, rastanaka, raskida - uvideli smo da su nam životi vezani zauvek i da svojim slabim ljudskim snagama ne možemo ništa ni protiv svoje ljubavi ni protiv prepreka koje joj stoje na putu.

the reading of many books brings wisdom, and the reading of one brings ignorance armed with rage and hatred.

Borise Davidovi?u, ne dajte se pasjim sinovima!

You can't play the role of a victim all your life without becoming one in the end.

Kad se jedna laž ponavlja dugo, narod po?inje da veruje.

I would have liked to catch hold of sleep at least once, just as I had been resolved to catch hold of death one day, to catch hold of the wings of the angel of sleep when it came for me, to grab it with two fingers like a butterfly after sneaking up on it from behind. [...] My sleep game was practice for the grand struggle with death.

Even a stone would talk if you broke its teeth.

History is written by the victors. Legends are woven by the people. Writers fantasize. Only death is certain. "To Die for One's Country is Glorious," p. 131

It is hard to lift up your own misfortune. To be at once the viewer and the viewed. To be both above and below. The one below is a spot, a shadow . . . To consider your own person in the light of eternity (read: in the light of death). To rise into the air. The world from a bird's-eye view.

Dani teku kao reka vremena, ka uš?u, ka smrti.

Y no permita que la literatura, en su caso, sustituya al amor. La literatura también es peligrosa. La vida no se puede reemplazar con nada.

Ulazimo u voz sa svojim smešnim prtljagom, vu?emo sa sobom ?ergu svoga lutalaštva, žalosnu pri?u mog detinjstva.

Opasno je naginjati se nad tu?om prazninom, a u pustoj želji da se u njoj, kao na dnu bunara, ogleda svoje sopstveno lice; jer i to je taština. Taština nad taštinama.

Witnessing the blind fury of this mob and seeing them kill before my eyes the Jews who refused to be converted (some out of faith, and others from that pride which can sometimes be perilous), I answered that I would rather be converted than killed, since, in spite of everything, the temporary agony of being is more valuable than the ultimate void of nothingness.

Ispod toga sam bio zapisao pre nekoliko ve?eri, kada mi je postalo jasno da Euridika više ne?e do?i: Agnosceo veteris vestigia flamme. Ožiljkom jednim oboga?en.