Péter Nádas > Quotes

“if one could learn the most important things in life, one would still have to learn how to keep quiet about them.”
― Péter Nádas, A Book of Memories

“By fantasizing one builds a more predictable world, and then one has no time to notice what is really happening, because of the din made by one's expectations crashing down.”
― Peter Nadas, Parallel Stories: A Novel

“Hardly anything remained of which he could speak aloud.”
― Peter Nadas, Parallel Stories: A Novel

“The harmony of two bodies expressed in this single touch, bridging their differences and bending their moral reserve, was as powerful and wild as
physical fulfillment, yet there was nothing false in this harmony, no
illusion created that just by touching, our bodies could express feelings
that rationality prevented us from making permanent; I might even say that
our bodies cooly preserved their good sense, scheming and keeping each
other in check, as if to say, I'll yield unreservedly to the madness of
the moment but only if and when you do the same; but this physical plea
for passion and reason, spontaneity and calculation, closeness and
distance, took our bodies past the point where, clinging to desire and
striving for the moment of gratification, they would seek a new and more complete harmony.”
― Peter Nadas, A Book of Memories

“my foolishness had me believe that i was the story, and this bleak cold night merely its setting, but in fact my real story played itself out almost independently of me or, more precisely, occurred parallel to my own little adventures.”
― Péter Nádas, A Book of Memories

“Több mint hat évtizednyi munka, azaz a nyelv előtti és a nyelven túli létérzékelés különbségtételének tapasztalatával a múzsák tevékenységéről mindenesetre annyit mondhatok, hogy csók biztosan nincs.”
― Péter Nádas, Szépírás mint hivatás

“In the most significant moments of life, one’s mind is busy with completely inessential, insignificant things.”
― Péter Nádas, Parallel Stories: A Novel

“...az egyszerűségnél nincsen komplikáltabb a művészetben, s így az egyszerűség a hierarchia csúcsán áll. Kizárólag haladóknak. Herceg nem érhet fel hozzá. Onnan senki le nem viszi a plebsznek, hogy egyenlő arányban ők is részesüljenek belőle, nincs olyan demokrácia, amely művészettel bárkit felemelhetne bárhová. Saját egyszerűségéhez mindenkinek fel kell nőnie, tartósan légritka levegőn élnie és dolgoznia, ehhez pedig tényleg kell a kurázsi. Ha nincs kurázsi, akkor nincs művészet. Monarchiában is kell a kurázsi, diktatúrában is kell a kurázsi, még a kurva kibaszott demokráciában vagy plutokráciában is kell a kurázsi, mert a művészetben a többségi vélemény teljesen értéktelen és még a kurázsi sem elég hozzá.”
― Péter Nádas, Halott barátaim

“...our own barbaric civilization, in awe of the act of creation, does not respect creation at all.”
― Péter Nádas, A Book of Memories

“...in the final analysis one is incapable of total self-annihilation, either mental or physical, not even having taken cyanide, for even then it's the poison, or the rope, or the water, or the bullet that does the job...”
― Péter Nádas, A Book of Memories

“Every cock differs from every other cock the way men do from one another, though each cock is always surprisingly different from the man it belongs to.”
― Péter Nádas, Parallel Stories: A Novel

“we remain children as long as we feel the urge to keep crossing this border and to learn.”
― Péter Nádas, A Book of Memories

“His sperm kept on seeping. His erection referred not to just anyone but precisely to that someone who might pop up at any moment, that someone whom everyone here idolized and worshipped, that someone whom he too was looking for but hadn’t yet found.”
― Péter Nádas, Parallel Stories: A Novel

“I also tended to avoid her because I could not imagine the moment when she’d give up the playacting, take me back, and press me to herself for the first time. I was scared that I might push her away because she had become repugnant, because she had left me, and because I really hated her. Of course I suspected that this woman, whom I sometimes imagined was my mother, was among those who were crushed when the marquee of the Duna Cinema crashed down. Probably not one of those whom the rescuers scraped out alive from under the rubble after the dust settled and everyone was sobbing, fleeing, helping, or only helplessly screaming and watching the incredible. That would mean I’d lost my mother for the second time. Later some good people carried the corpses to the corner of Antal Nagy Street in Buda, and then, at the cost of subdued altercations on top of the rubble, the line for bread re-formed itself.”
― Péter Nádas, Parallel Stories: A Novel

“Nem csak hazai terepen futottam, hanem sokfelé. A levegő áramlásával együtt fogadtam be idegen városokat és tájakat. Ha nem a lábával, hanem a fejével fut az ember, miként Lovelock, akkor a kívánatos izommunka jellegét és mértékét a légzés ritmusával állítja be. Az egyenletes légzés köti meg a látványt a futó emlékezetében. S ha figyelme arányosan oszlik meg a horizont és a testéhez mért háromlépésnyi távolság között, akkor egy idő után a testi valójával sem kell törődnie. A látvány erősebb a testi érzeténél. Növényvédő szerektől bűzlő, homokszürkére pusztított spárgaföldeken futottam át Hollandiába. Harmattól tocsogó, vad mezei ösvényeken futottam át Franciaországba. Elemi élvezetet okozott büntetlenül átfutni az államhatárokon.
Csupán a párázó testemmel, csupasz lélegzetemmel tudtam volna magam igazolni.
Igen, ez bizony én vagyok.”
― Péter Nádas, Own Death

“or their confidence in the historical mission of the Hungarian people, but who feel great social responsibility for rural wretchedness and urban poverty, yet nevertheless adjust their professions’ rules and demands to the generally accepted and all-pervasive laws of the corrupt gentry.”
― Péter Nádas, Parallel Stories: A Novel

“Az ősállapothoz képest mindenesetre ismeretlen. Értsük úgy, hogy az univerzum érzékileg minden ízében ismerős, fogalmilag viszont teljességgel ismeretlen. Mozgásom irányt kap az erőtől. Az erő kifordított a végtelenség ismerős kozmoszából. A kimozdulás, a kifordulás, a mozgás, a tér elváltozása először történik meg, először látom, hogy a mozgásnak kiszabott iránya van. Mégis sok mindennek van neve. Nem mindennek. Egy fogalmi gondolkodásban gazdag élet tapasztalatával nézek vissza arra, amiről fogalmak híján nem gondolkodhatom, hiszen először történik. Nem a fogalmaimmal értelmezem, amit először élek át, hanem az elvonatkoztatás tapasztalatát működtetem. Amiről evilági nyelven azt lehetne mondani, hogy kozmikusan meglepett. Mert ezek szerint a fogalmi gondolkodás szintjén túl is van elvont gondolkodás.”
― Péter Nádas, Own Death

“Karla was weak; one morning, before going to the Auenberg estate, the baby unexpectedly fell silent after protracted screaming. It would have been good if he’d stopped breathing. Karla had the impression that the baby accepted his death.”
― Péter Nádas, Parallel Stories: A Novel

“If one decides to build on illusions, it is not easy to break free of hypocrisy and the worship of decoration.”
― Péter Nádas, Parallel Stories: A Novel

“Nem volt nap, mikor ne képzeltem volna el az erőszakos halálomat, megöltek vagy megöltem magam, ám igen ritkán fordult meg a fejemben, hogy ne lennék egészséges, mert abban az általánosan elterjedt hiedelemben éltem, hogy a szorongás nem a test figyelmeztetése, hanem a lélek produkciója, s ezen úrrá lehet lenni.”
― Péter Nádas, Own Death

“If only because of his son’s terrible death, he could not have Creation allowing atheists and Communists to be right and materialism to enjoy such primacy. He could not believe there was no hereafter, that there would be no final judgment, that there was no kind of mercy.”
― Péter Nádas, Parallel Stories: A Novel

“In reality there's no such thing as perfect symmetry or total sameness; a transitional balance between dissimilarities is the most we can hope for; although our scuffle wasn't at all serious, it did not turn into an embrace, for the same reason that he had pushed me away: up to that point, wishing to keep up the pretense of perfect symmetry, I had accepted the less comfortable position so he could rest comfortably in my arms, but that was like telling him he was the weaker one, which, in turn, was like telling him he wasn't as much of a man as he'd like me to believe, forgetting for the moment that letting him have the better position gave me much more pleasure; yet precisely because there is no perfect symmetry, only a striving for it, there can be no gesture without the need for another to complete it.”
― Péter Nádas, A Book of Memories

“Fate had taken its revenge on the women; their fucking fate screwed them but good.”
― Péter Nádas, Parallel Stories: A Novel

“... it's no accident that poets so delight in singing of the connection between love and death, for never do we experience our body's autonomy so purely as when we fight for our lives or in the moment of love's consummation, when we experience our body in its most primeval form, with no history, no creator, obeying no law of gravity, without contour, able to see itself in no mirror, having no need for any of this, becoming a single, explosive dot of pure light in the infinity of our inner darkness...”
― Péter Nádas, A Book of Memories

“To imagine that he would meet his total-stranger doppelganger, differing from him only proportionately. He couldn’t imagine this other person except as an exact likeness, which is why it couldn’t be a girl. But this person should be more perfect than he, rather like that giant from whom he’d been fleeing, but not so perfect as to humiliate him with physical and mental superiority.”
― Péter Nádas, Parallel Stories: A Novel

“We consider our primary task to be not the curing of the individual but genetic prevention, he explained, the treatment of the nation’s body, which means filtering out and annihilating the sick or flawed inherited stock, because we are working for the benefit of a healthy and racially pure genetic stock. It is for this purpose that we have established our network of race-nurturing physicians. One can only regret that the Hungarians cannot come along with us in this great work. For the first time, we have raised the latest racial-biological findings to the level of state interest, and you will believe me, Countess, when I say that this is an unshakable edifice.”
― Péter Nádas, Parallel Stories: A Novel

“Gyöngyvér was living proof that the Hungarian government, in accordance with an agreement, wanted the Eichmann papers delivered to the court in Jerusalem. Her confession was calculated into the game. The disappearance of the embassy’s chief counselor on the way to his post was duly recorded, and this official record included the missing person’s overcoat and briefcase.”
― Péter Nádas, Parallel Stories: A Novel

“For five nights in a row, again and again, at different locations and in different positions he had offered me everything. Maybe his specialty was showing not only his prick but also his testicles, hair, belly, and top of his thighs. There was a certain merciless openness in this. The relief of his stomach, thighs, and loins, his head, and his entire splendid figure eerily reminded me of the man with anvil and hammer one can see on the twenty-forint bill. On each occasion, I had stupidly run away from him. To my shame, in the light of day I would take out the twenty-forint bill to see him and be with him. I couldn’t forget him. The only difference between him and his image on the bill was that on the latter the artist had used drapery to conceal the loins.”
― Péter Nádas, Parallel Stories: A Novel

“By the way, my name is Bellardi, he added, to end the embarrassing misunderstanding between them. And as if moved by this mention of his own historic name, he gently combined the two names. My son is László Bellardi, and of course that’s my name too.”
― Péter Nádas, Parallel Stories: A Novel

“Both he and Mária Szapáry found some gratification in the half hour or forty minutes they spent sitting together in the noisy corridor; being close in a time of trouble and in the most profound feeling of being in the same situation because they loved the same being. For without hesitation they would, for Elisa, have strangled or murdered with a pistol, hunting rifle, anything, a knife or their bare hands. And their peculiar solidarity was enriched by their being a man and a woman, proportionately entwined with Elisa’s life.”
― Péter Nádas, Parallel Stories: A Novel