Imre Kertész: Quotes about the trip

Imre Kertész was Hungarian writer. Explore interesting quotes on way.

Imre Kertész: 122 quotes8 likes

“Once you have started, the only way back is to go forward.”

Source: Detective Story (2008), p. 91.
Context: There was truth in Diaz’s logic, yes: our line of work is like that. Once you have started, the only way back is to go forward.

“Giving state support to literature is the state's sneaky way for the state liquidation of literature.”

Imre Kertész

Liquidation (2003)
Context: The state is always the same. The only reason it financed literature up till now was in order to liquidate it. Giving state support to literature is the state's sneaky way for the state liquidation of literature.

“I had gotten into the habit of sleeping late because I had started to see that this was the only sensible way I could kill time.”

Imre Kertész

Liquidation (2003)

“Of course, living is another way of killing oneself: its drawback is that it takes so horribly long.”

Imre Kertész

Source: Detective Story (2008), p. 35.

“You just sit here and tolerate it, the same way everything in this country is tolerated. Every deception, every lie, every bullet in the brains. Just as you are already tolerating bullets in the brains that will be implemented only after the bullet is put in your brains.”

Imre Kertész

Liquidation (2003)

“By way of that wretched sentence "Auschwitz cannot be explained" is the wretched author explaining that we should be silent concerning Auschwitz, that Auschwitz doesn’t exist, or, rather, that it didn’t, for the only facts that cannot be explained are those that don’t or didn’t exist.”

Imre Kertész book Kaddish for an Unborn Child

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)