Imre Kertesz

“No" — I could never be another person’s father, fate, god,"No" — it should never happen to another child, what happened to me; my childhood. (Auschwitz).”

“I have felt that some sort of awful shame is attached to my name and that I have somehow brought this shame along from somewhere I have never been, and that I have carried this sin as my sin even though I have never committed it; this sin pursues me all my life, which life is undoubtedly not my own even thought I live it , I suffer from it die of it.”

“I read somewhere; while God still existed one sustained a dialogue with God, and now that He no longer exists one has to sustain a dialogue with other people, I guess, or, better still, with oneself, that is to say, one talks or mumbles to oneself.”

“Man, when reduced to nothing, or in other words a survivor, is not tragic but comic, because he has no fate.”

“As we pass one step, and as we recognize it as being behind us, the next one already rises up before us. By the time we learn everything, we slowly come to understand it. And while you come to understand everything gradually, you don't remain idle at any moment: you are already attending to your new business; you live, you act, you move, you fulfill the new requirements of every new step of development. If, on the other hand, there were no schedule, no gradual enlightenment, if all the knowledge descended on you at once right there in one spot, then it's possible neither your brains nor your heart could bear it.”

“Kurti had believed in politics, and politics had deceived him, the way politics deceives everyone.”

“You just sit there and tolerate it, the same way everything in this country is tolerated. Every deception, every lie, every bullet in the brains. Just as you are already tolerating bullets in the brains that will be implemented only after the bullet is put in your brains.”

“The West in general should stand up more for its own values. It is not always worthwhile to compromise.”

“...една жена с плаха усмивка и плавни движения, с архаичната маска на босонога слугиня с разпуснати коси тихо и свенливо моли да я пусна в моето ultimum moriens, т. е. в сърцето си, там се оглежда с мила и любопитна усмивка, докосва всичко с нежна ръка, тук-таме забърсва праха, проветрява застоялите кътчета, изхвърля едно-друго и на мястото нарежда собствените си вещи, настанява се изящно, акуратно и неотразимо, докато накрая осъзнавам, че съм напълно изтикан оттам и потиснат, като чужденец в изгнание, обикалям собственото си сърце, което ми се мержелее в далечината със затворени врати, както нечий топъл дом за бездомника; и доста често успявам да се нанеса обратно само ако се върна с друга жена под ръка и я настаня там.”

“Kingbitter, as he did frequently nowadays, was standing at his window and looking out onto the street below. This street offered the most mundane and ordinary sights of Budapest's mundane and ordinary streets. The muck-, oil-, and dog-dirt-spattered sidewalk was lined with parked cars, and in the one-yard gaps between the cars and the leprotically peeling house walls the most mundane and ordinary passersby were attempting to go about their business, their hostile features an outward clue to their dark thoughts. Every now and then, perhaps in a hurry to overtake the single file inching along the front, one of them would step off the sidewalk, only for an entire chorus of rancorous car horns to give the lie to any groundless hope of breaking free from the line.”

“...I would like to live a little bit longer in this beautiful concentration camp.”