Quotes from Wolfgang Hildesheimer

It is, as you can imagine, a genuine problem: I would never put up with less. It is a rather complicated problem, and my friends, or at least the well-meaning among them, advise me to solve it. But I cannot make up my mind to do so, I have gotten used to it. Sometimes, I wonder: what would I be without my problem? And of course I am unable to respond.

To think of how many times I have carted a lingering drunk out of my house in a wheelbarrow and leaned him up against a tree along the road.

Wieder ist ein Jahr vergangen: allmählich wird mir dieser ewigwährende Zyklus ein wenig leid, wozu verschiedene Faktoren, deren Urheber ich in diesem Zusammenhang, um mich keinen Unannehmlichkeiten, deren Folgen, die in Kauf zu nehmen ich, der ich gerne Frieden halte, gezwungen wäre, nicht absehbar wären, auszusetzen, nicht nennen möchte, beitragen.

I had given up magic, because it had reached a state of perfection. I felt that I was able to transform men into animals. I did not make use of this capability, because I believed I could not justify an intervention of this kind in the life of another person.

When I was five years old, my parents gave me a magic chest. I learned to cast spells, although of a childish kind, before I had learned to read and write.

The revolutionary Mozart is the Mozart of his last eight years.