Top 15 Herta Müller Quotes

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

Inside the camp the we-form is singular.

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

Half starved humans are really neither masculine nor feminine but genderless, like objects.

Hunger is not a bunker or a bed frame, otherwise it could be measured. Hunger is not an object.

Hunger devours nearly all the artistry.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

The time for eating otrach orach is over. But not the hunger, which is always greater than we are.

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.