Thomas Bernhard Quotes

“Very often we write down a sentencethen anotherwhat we have to do is write it down at the proper time, otherwise it's lost.”

“The thinking man always finds himself in a gigantic orphanage in which people are continually proving to him that he has no parents.”

“To wake up one day and be Steinway and Glen in One… Glen Steinway, Steinway Glen, all for Bach.”

“everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death”

“Everything is what it is, that's all. If we keep attaching meanings and mysteries to everything we perceive, everything we see that is, and to everything that goes on inside us, we are bound to go crazy sooner or later, I thought.”

“I did not want to be anything, and naturally I did not want to turn myself into a mere profession: all I ever wanted was to be myself.”

“You've always lived a life of pretense, not a real life-- a simulated existence, not a genuine existence. Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretense, never genuine, never real.”

“Everyone, he went on, speaks a language he does not understand, but which now and then is understood by others. That is enough to permit one to exist and at least to be misunderstood.”

“We have to keep company with supposedly bad characters if we are to survive and not succumb to mental atrophy. People of good character, so called, are the ones who end up boring us to death.”

“The only friends I have are the dead who have bequeathed their writings to me--I have no others.”

“You are never truly together with one you love until the person in question is dead and actually inside you.”

“I avoid literature whenever possible, because whenever possible I avoid myself…”

“After all, there is nothing but failure.”