Imre Kertész Quotes

I am sick of atrocities, though these are now the natural order of our world. And I would still like to act!

One cannot start a new life, you can only continue the old one.

You just sit there 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.

I refuse to adapt or integrate myself.

...I would like to live a little bit longer in this beautiful concentration camp.

Talking is not enough; words don't clarify anything. I'll have to hit upon something, but what?

Nonexistence. The society of the nonexistent. In the street yesterday a nonexistent person trod on my foot with his nonexistent foot.

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

I look on my life as raw material for my novels: that's just the way I am, and it frees me from any inhibitions.

There's just one revolution that I can take seriously, and that's a police revolution.

I tried to depict the human face of this history, I wanted to write a book that people would actually want to read.