Quotes from book
The Hunger Angel

Name: The Hunger Angel
Author: Herta Müller

Herta MüllerOriginal title Atemschaukel (German, 2009)

The Hunger Angel is a 304-page prose poem by Herta Müller. The English translation is by Philip Boehm .

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

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

“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

“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

“The world is not a costume ball”

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

Similar authors

Herta Müller28

German-Romanian novelist, poet and essayist 1953

Emil M. Cioran531

Romanian philosopher and essayist None

Christopher Morley30

American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet None

Erich Maria Remarque63

German novelist None

Marcel Proust41

French novelist, critic, and essayist None

Thomas Mann159

German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate None

Paul Valéry89

French poet, essayist, and philosopher None

Hermann Hesse168

German writer None

Maurice Maeterlinck21

Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist None

Cesare Pavese137

Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator None