Herta Müller Quotes

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

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.

There (Kaschau) the mountains stare down through our heads until we die.

Inside the camp the we-form is singular.

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

You can't rearrange freshly fallen snow, you can't fix snow so it looks untouched. You can rework earth, and sand and even grass if you try hard enough. Water takes care of itself, because it swallows everything and flows back together once it's done swallowing. And air is always in place because you can't see it. Everything but snow would have kept quiet.

Riding somewhere was always a happy thing. First of all: as long as you're moving, you haven't arrived. As long as you haven't arrived, you don't have to work. Riding in truck gives you time to recover. Second: when you ride, you come to some place that couldn't care less about you. you can't be yelled at or beaten by a tree. Under a tree, yes but the tree can't help that.

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

No novels, since you just read them once and never again.

Boredom is fear's patience. Fear doesn't want to exaggerate.

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

I simply wanted to go to a place that didn't know who I was.

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.

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

Welt, Welt, Schwester Welt