German - Novelist | August 17, 1953 -
If, in the very first pages, I'm forced to read gratuitous phrases or banal metaphors, I won't be able to get inside the story. Only if the sentences 'sparkle' can I get hooked.
Herta Muller
SparkleStoryInsideFirstGetAble
I find any kind of 'organizing' very difficult. And that has irksome consequences when it comes to books, since I've often wound up buying books twice because I couldn't find what I already have in all my mess.
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My first book, 'Nadirs,' was very important for me. I'll leave its literary worth for others to judge. But its publication in Berlin in 1984 gave me protection. As did the awards it won. The Romanian secret police could no longer treat me and my friends as though we were completely cut off from the rest of the world. And we no longer felt cut off.
PoliceMeWorldBookTreatRest
We didn't have any books at home. Not even children's books or fairy tales. The only 'fantastic' stories came from religion class. And I took them all very literally, that God sees everything, and so I felt I was always being watched. Or that dead people were in Heaven right over our village.
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Whatever I read went under my skin. I almost devoured the literature, which became like a road to discovery.
RoadLiteratureDiscoverySkinLike
I write in order to bear witness to life.
LifeBearWriteOrderWitness
I speak a kind of Hapsburg language.
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I learned Romanian very late, when I was fifteen, in town, and I wanted to learn it. I like the language very much.
LanguageLearnLateLikeTownMuch
Romanian is a very beautiful, sensual, poetic language.
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Through writing, one experiences something different to what one experiences with the five senses one has because language is a different metier.
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If I don't belong because of what I think and because of my opinions, then so be it. What can one do about it? One can't bend over backwards or pretend to be someone else just to belong. And in any case, it doesn't work. Once you no longer belong, it's over.
WorkThinkSomeoneOpinionsYou
It was only against my mother's will that I attended the preparatory high school in the city. She wanted me to become a seamstress in the village. She knew that if I moved to the city, I would become corrupted. And I was. I started to read books.
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