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Herta Müller Quotes

Herta Müller is a Romanian-born German novelist, poet, essayist and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Nițchidorf, Timiș County in Romania, her native language is German. Since the early 1990s, she has been internationally established, and her works have been translated into more than twenty languages.Müller is noted for her works depicting the effects of violence, cruelty and terror, usually in the setting of the Socialist Republic of Romania under the repressive Nicolae Ceaușescu regime which she has experienced herself. Many of her works are told from the viewpoint of the German minority in Romania and are also a depiction of the modern history of the Germans in the Banat and Transylvania. Her much acclaimed 2009 novel The Hunger Angel portrays the deportation of Romania's German minority to Soviet Gulags during the Soviet occupation of Romania for use as German forced labor.

Müller has received more than twenty awards to date, including the Kleist Prize , the Aristeion Prize , the International Dublin Literary Award and the Franz Werfel Human Rights Award . On 8 October 2009, the Swedish Academy announced that she had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, describing her as a woman "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed". Wikipedia  

✵ 17. August 1953
Herta Müller photo

Works

The Hunger Angel
The Hunger Angel
Herta Müller
The Appointment
The Appointment
Herta Müller
The Land of Green Plums
The Hunger Angel
The Hunger Angel
Herta Müller
The Appointment
The Appointment
Herta Müller
The Land of Green Plums
Herta Müller: 28 quotes5 likes

Famous Herta Müller Quotes

“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.”

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 26

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

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 68

“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 book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 3

“When we don't speak, said Edgar, we become unbearable, and when we do, we make fools of ourselves.”

Herta Müller book The Land of Green Plums

Source: The Land of Green Plums

“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 book The Land of Green Plums

Source: The Land of Green Plums

“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.”

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 1

Herta Müller Quotes about the world

“You go out for a walk and the world opens up for you. And before you’ve even stretched your legs properly, it closes shut. For here to there it’s all just the farty sputter of lantern. And they call that having lived. It’s not worth the bother of putting on your shoes.”

Herta Müller book The Appointment

Michael Hulse and Philip Boehm translation, Picador 2002, p. 80
The Appointment (1997)

“The world is not a costume ball”

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 5

“World world sister world
When shall I tire of you.
When my bread is dry
When my hand forgets my glass
When the coffin’s boxed me in
Maybe that’s when I’ll be tired of you.
…
Living is despairing
And the dead they rot away”

Herta Müller book The Appointment

Michael Hulse and Philip Boehm translation, Picador 2002, p. 92
The Appointment (1997)

“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.”

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 17–18

Herta Müller Quotes about time

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

Herta Müller book The Appointment

Michael Hulse and Philip Boehm translation, Picador 2002, p. 81
The Appointment (1997)

“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.”

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 50

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

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 17

“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.”

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 20

Herta Müller Quotes

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

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 7

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

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 55

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

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 261

“If you don't have the right things, you improvise. the wrong things become necessary. Then the necessary things turn out to be the only right things, simply because they're what you have.”

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 6

“A lot of people think packing a suitcase is something you learn through practice, like singing or praying.”

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 6

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

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 61

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

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 81

“Inside the camp the we-form is singular.”

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 251

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

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 198

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

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 2

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

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 4

“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.”

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 11

“Hunger devours nearly all the artistry.”

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 74

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

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 149

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