Herta Müller Quotes

A lot of people think packing a suitcase is something you learn through practice, like singing or praying.

The real secret is why love starts out with claws like a cat and then fades with time like a half-eaten mouse.

Perhaps we had to stand so long as to stop the time in motion. Our bones became heavy as iron. When the flesh on your body disappears,your bones become a burden, and the ground pulls you down.

The world is not a costume ball,

Inside the camp the we-form is singular.

There’s an unspoken law that you should never start to cry if you have too many reasons to do so.

Being a stranger is hard, but being a stranger when you're so impossibly close is unbearable.

You can think all kinds of things. But you can't know for sure.

The war was still on in January 1945. In their dismay at my being shipped off in the dead of winter to who knows where in Russia, everyone wanted to give me something that might be of use, even if it couldn't be help. Because nothing in the world could possible help.

I was my own thief, the words came out of nowhere and caught me.

How can you face the world if all you can say about yourself is that you're hungry. If you can't think of anything else.

I don't know if I can't sleep because I am trying to recall the objects, or whether I struggle to recall them because I can't sleep.

I have packed myself into silence so deeply and for so long that I can never unpack myself using words. When I speak, I only pack myself a little differently.

Welt, Welt, Schwester Welt

If you don't have the right things, you improvise. the wrong things become necessary. Then the necessary things turn out to be the only right things, simply because they're what you have.