Elfriede Jelinek: Trending quotes

“Sometimes, of course, art creates the suffering in the first place.”

“He lies like a book. And he reads a lot of books.”

“Vice is basically the love of failure.”

“I have a feeling that you despise your body and that you only value art, you only value your argent needs, but eating and sleeping aren’t enough. You believe that your appearance is your enemy, and the only friend you have is music. Why look just in the mirror, look at your reflection, you’ll never find a better friend that yourself.”

“Nothing is natural, yet everything is as it is by nature.”

“I don’t know if it’s enough for a whole life, a man wants to enjoy many women, a man is different.”

“sewing in itself is already in the women's blood.”

“The criteria of art are the imponderable, the immeasurable.”

“Of course, art turns many people away for there has to be a limit. The limits between the gifted and the ungifted.”

“In the old days people had no time to harm the environment because they were busy doing harm to themselves, in the War, for instance.”

“Time stands still for man and woman alike, it is a good moment, because Time usually makes everything worse, poor people grow old, rich people can buy a little time but they can'hold it up for good, it always catches up with them. In the last analysis, Time is democratic.”

“The most powerful urge known to Man is the urge to be free of manual labour. Any means that accomplishes that end is fine. Some people erroneously imagine that they have a birthright to non-manual work.”

“weak are defeated by the strong in the world of Nature. A reed by the north wind, for instance. And silence by the forest.”

“Death the Laveller annihilates all distinctions.”

“often these women marry or they are ruined some other way.”

“For the first thing a proprietor learns, and painfully at that, is: Trust is fine, but control is better.”

“A sensitive person gets burned, like a delicate moth.”

“For the eyes are the mirror of the soul and ought to remain unscathed if at all possible. Otherwise people will suppose the soul is done for.”

“There are no holidays for art; and that’s just fine with the artist.”