Elias Canetti Quotes

Another woman catches sight of Fischerle's hump on the ground and runs screaming into the street: 'Murder! Murder!' She takes the hump for a corpse. Further details - she knows none. The murderer is very thin, a poor sap, how he came to do it, you shouldn't have thought it of him. Shot may be, someone suggests. Of course, everyone heard the shot. Three streets off, the shot had been heard. Not a bit of it, that was a motor tyre. No, it was a shot! The crowd won't be done out of its shot. A threatening attitude is assumed towards the doubters. Don't let him go. An accessory. Trying to confuse the trail! Out of the building comes more news. The woman's statements are revised. The thin man has been murdered. And the corpse on the floor? It's alive. It's the murderer, he had hidden himself. He was tring to creep away between the corpse's legs when he was caught. The more recent information is more detailed. The little man is a dwarf. What do you expect, a cripple! The blow was actually struck by another. A redheaded man. Ah, those redheads. The dwarf put him up to it. Lynch him! The woman gave the alarm. Cheers for the woman! She screamed and screamed. A Woman! Doesn't know what fear is. The murderer had threatened her. The redhead. It's always the Reds. He tore her collar off. No shooting. Of course not. What did he say? Someone must have invented the shot. The dwarf. Where is he? Inside. Rush the doors! No one else can get in. It's full up. What a murder! The woman had a plateful. Thrashed her every day. Half dead, she was. What did she marry a dwarf for? I wouldn't marry a dwarf. And you with a big man to yourself. All she could find. Too few men, that's what it is. The war! Young people to-day...Quite young he was too. Not eighteen. And a dwarf already. Clever! He was born that way. I know that. I've seen him. Went in there. Couldn't stand it. Too much blood. That's why he's so thin. An hour ago he was a great, fat man. Loss of blood, horrible! I tell you corpses sw

You need the rhetoric of others, the aversion it inspires, in order to find the way out of your own.

Almost Kien was tempted to believe in happiness, that contemptible life-goal of illiterates. If it came of itself, without being hunted for, if you did not hold it fast by force and treated it with a certain condescension, it was permissible to endure its presence for a few days

It amazes me how a person to whom literature means anything can take it up as an object of study.

I repulse death with all my strength. If I accepted it, I would be a murderer.

Everything you rejected and pushed aside—take it up again.

...how could I, fool that I am, go on sitting in my office, or here at home, instead of leaping onto a train with my eyes shut and opening them only when I am with you?

ها أنذا أحاول أن أجترح تصوير شيء ما، و ما إن يلفني الصمت حتى أدرك أني ما قلت شيئا على الإطلاق. ثمة مادة دبقة، نورانية، على نحو بديع، بقيت في أعماقي تتحدى الكلمات. و هي اللغة التي لم أتفهمها هناك، و التي من المحتم أنها الآن تجد ترجمتها في دواخلي؟ هناك أحداث، صور، و أصوات بدأ معناها الآن ينبعث حياً، تلك الكلمات التى لم تعرف التسجيل و لا الصياغة التي تكمن فيما وراء الكلمات، أبعد غوراً، أكثر التباساً من الكلمات.

Gelecek; kendini nasıl atabilirdi acaba geleceğe? Şimdiki zaman, geçip gitmesine ses çıkarmadığı takdirde, artık Kien’e hiçbir zarar veremezdi. Ah, bir ortadan kaldırılabilseydi şu şimdiki zaman! Dünya üzerindeki tüm mutsuzluklar, yeterince gelecekte yaşayamamaktan kaynaklanıyordu. Bugün dayak yediği takdirde, yüz yıl sonra bunun ne önemi kalacaktı? Yapılması gereken, içinde yaşanılan zamanı geçip gitmeye bırakmak ve dayaktan ileri gelen şişleri görmezlikten gelmekti. Tüm acıların suçu, şimdiki zamanın sırtındaydı. Kien, geleceğin özlemini çekiyordu; çünkü geleceğe ulaştığında, yeryüzünde daha çok geçmiş bulunacaktı. Geçmiş iyiydi, kimseye bir zararı yoktu; Kien, geçmişte yirmi yıl süreyle istediği gibi ve mutlu yaşamıştı. Kim mutlu olabiliyordu ki şimdiki zamanda? Evet, duyularımız bulunmasaydı eğer, o zaman şimdiki zamana da dayanılabilirdi. O zaman anıların yardımıyla -demek ki yine de geçmişte- yaşanılabilirdi. Başlangıçta yalnızca söz vardı; ama var’dı; başka deyişle geçmiş sözden önce vardı. Kien, geçmişin bu öncelikli konumu karşısında saygıyla eğildi.

His meals were always punctual. Whether she cooked well or badly he did not know; it was a matter of total indifference to him. During his meals, which he ate at his writing desk, he was busy with important considerations. As a rule he would not have been able to say what precisely he had in his mouth. He reserved consciousness for real thoughts; they depend upon it; without consciousness, thoughts are unthinkable. Chewing and digestion happen of themselves.

The touch to which one resigns oneself because all resistance appears hopeless – and particularly so as regards the future – has, in our society, become the arrest. The feel of the hand of authority on his shoulder is usually enough to make a man give himself up without having to be actually seized. He cowers and goes quietly.

His great holy books, which he does not know. They are so holy that he does not dare to open them.

One should tell oneself how fruitful misunderstandings are. One shouldn’t despise them. One of the wisest people was a collector of misunderstandings.

The freedom to fail is preserved, as a sort of supreme law, which guarantees escape at every fresh juncture. One is inclined to call this the freedom of the weak person who seeks salvation in defeat. His true uniqueness, his special relation to power, is expressed in the prohibition of victory. All calculations originate and end in impotence.

"The trouble is, I am not at peace with myself; I am not always "something," and if for once I am "something," I pay for it by "being nothing" for months on end.' — Kafka, quoted by Canetti"