Elfriede Jelinek Quotes

weak are defeated by the strong in the world of Nature. A reed by the north wind, for instance. And silence by the forest.

Work is not a constraint.Man's activity provides his true fulfilment. True fulfilment however,can only be achieved if one man is not another man's slave.

Intellectuals will still go on emphasizing free will even when they’ve got nothing left to eat.

In the old days people had no time to harm the environment because they were busy doing harm to themselves, in the War, for instance.

The most powerful urge known to Man is the urge to be free of manual labour. Any means that accomplishes that end is fine. Some people erroneously imagine that they have a birthright to non-manual work.

Stifter tells us that people are not free, that they are slaves to the laws of Nature. So you have to commit violent deeds (if you don’t have anyone to do other kinds of deeds with), actions that ordinary people would call crimes but which we define as the norm, though of course it is our norm and no that of the rest.

Rainer [protagonist in the novel], who is reading The Outsider by Camus, says he would like to put the hostility of the world behind him. Once your hope for something better is taken from you, then at last you have the present all in your hand. Then you yourself are reality. Others are extras. When Rainer contemplated san evening he says that evening is melancholy ceasefire where all life has come to and end.

We are monsters, even if we disguise ourselves as ordinary people. We are the children of ordinary people but we are not content with that. Inwardly we are consumed with wickedness, outwardly we are grammar school pupils.

Nothing is natural, yet everything is as it is by nature.

The rules of art do not exist, because what makes art art is the fact that it obeys no rules at all.

The world would be a lot better off if it paid more attention to its philosophers and artists than to its own tiny egotistic spirit, which lacks an overview. People should place their belief in Beethoven and Socrates.

In the case of a writer like Musil writing is often a graceful act,like a silvery fish leaping.

In this new era, what sets you free is knowledge, not work.

For the eyes are the mirror of the soul and ought to remain unscathed if at all possible. Otherwise people will suppose the soul is done for.

Don’t start anything you can’t finish.