Herta Müller > Quotes

“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.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“I'm always telling myself I don't have many feelings. Even when something does affect me I'm only moderately moved. I almost never cry. It's not that I'm stronger than the ones with teary eyes, I'm weaker. They have courage. When all you are is skin and bones, feelings are a brave thing. I'm more of a coward. The difference is minimal though, I just use my strength not to cry. When I do allow myself a feeling, I take the part that hurts and bandage it up with a story that doesn't cry, that doesn't dwell on homesickness.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“Women always need other women to lean on. They become friends in order to hate each other better. The more they hate each other, the more inseparable they become.”
― Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums

“When we don't speak, said Edgar, we become unbearable, and when we do, we make fools of ourselves.”
― Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums

“آدم ها تمام نمی شوند، آدم ها نیمه شب باهمه آنچه در پس ذهن تو برایت باقی گذاشته اند، به تو هجوم می آورند.”
― Herta Müller

“يالهُ من عبءٍ أن تكون غريباً ! لكن العبء الأكبر هو حينَ تكون القريب الغريب ، أن تتأرجح بين التقرّب والتغرّب.”
― Herta Müller, أرجوحة النفس

“Everyday brought me further away from other people, I had been placed out of the world's sight, as if in a cupboard, and I hoped it would stay that way. I developed a yearning for being alone, unkempt, untended.”
― Herta Müller, The Appointment

“الغَطرسة مرحلة سابقة للسقوط . .”
― Herta Müller, أرجوحة النفس

“To combat death you don't need much of a life, just one that isn't yet finished.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“My flesh was burning where the skin was scraped off my knees, and I was afraid that I couldn't be alive anymore with so much pain, and at the same time I knew I was alive because it hurt. I was afraid that death would find its way into me through this open knee and I quickly covered my knee with my hands.”
― Herta Müller, Nadirs

“Once upon a time they had some bad luck, and they blame everything on that.”
― Herta Müller

“If only the right person would have to leave, everyone else would be able to stay in the country.”
― Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums

“I wanted love to grow back, like the grass when it’s mown down. To grow differently, if need be, like children’s teeth, like hair, like fingernails. To spring up at will, wild and untended. The chill of the sheets made me shudder, and so did the warmth that followed when I lay down.”
― Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums

“Silence is also a form of speaking.”
― Herta Müller

“No words are adequate for the suffering caused by hunger. To this day I have to show hunger that I escaped his grasp. Ever since I stopped having to go hungry, I literally eat life itself. And when I eat, I am locked up inside the taste of eating. For sixty years, ever since I came back from the camp, I have been eating against starvation.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“No cities can grow in a dictatorship, because everything stays small when it’s being watched.”
― Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums

“At a time I used to think that in a world without guards people would walk differently from the way we do in our country. Where people are allowed to think and write differently, I thought, they will also walk differently.”
― Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums

“In this county, we had to walk, eat, sleep and love in fear.”
― Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums

“Only the demented would not have raised their hands in the great hall. They had exchanged fear for insanity".”
― Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums

“Little treasures have a sign that says, Here I am.
Bigger treasures have a sign that says, Do you remember.
But the most precious treasures of all will have a sign saying, I was there.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“Cuando callamos, resultamos desagradables ... cuando hablamos, quedamos en ridículo.”
― Herta Muller

“الأشياء الأبدية لا تتبدّد ، وهي لا تحتاج إلا إلى علاقةٍ وحيدةٍ لا تتغيّر مع الكونِ أبداً”
― Herta Müller

“إن لحظة السعادة الأخيرة على الإطلاق ،هي سعادةٌ فاضت عن حدّها بمقدار قطرةٍ واحدة … إنّها تحضرُ إليكَ مع الموت ”
― Herta Müller

“في السَعادةِ بعضُ البلاءْ ”
― Herta Müller

“We laughed a lot, to hide it from each other. But fear always finds an out. If you control your face, it slips into your voice. If you manage to keep a grip on your face and your voice, as if they were dead wood, it will slip out through your fingers. It will pass through your skin and lie there. You can see it lying around on objects close by.”
― Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums

“The summer is cruel to its leaves, the fall to its colors, the winter to us.”
― Herta Muller

“Some say that over time homesickness loses its specific content, that it starts to smolder and only then becomes all-consuming, because it’s no longer focused on a concrete home.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“Heute geht es mir besser, ich bin fast ein Mensch.”
― Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums

“الكنوز الصغيرة هي تلك التي كتب عليها «هذا أنا هنا».الكنوز الكبيرة هي المكتوب عليها «أنت تعرف بالتأكيد»وأحلاها هي التي كتب عليها «كنتُ هنا»”
― Herta Müller, أرجوحة النفس

“Sometimes things acquire a tenderness, a monstrous tenderness we don’t expect from them.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel