Herta Müller Quotes

23 Sourced Quotes

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
You go out for a walk and the world opens up for you. And before you've even stretched your legs properly, it closes shut. For here to there it's all just the farty sputter of lantern. And they call that having lived. It's not worth the bother of putting on your shoes.

Herta Müller
I simply wanted to go to a place that didn't know who I was.

Herta Müller
Being a stranger is hard, but being a stranger when you're so impossibly close is unbearable.

Herta Müller
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
Boredom is fear's patience. Fear doesn't want to exaggerate.

Herta Müller
A lot of people think packing a suitcase is something you learn through practice, like singing or praying.

Herta Müller
I was my own thief, the words came out of nowhere and caught me.

Herta Müller
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
Hunger is not a bunker or a bed frame, otherwise it could be measured. Hunger is not an object.

Herta Müller
No novels, since you just read them once and never again.

Herta Müller
There (Kaschau) the mountains stare down through our heads until we die.

Herta Müller
There's an unspoken law that you should never start to cry if you have too many reasons to do so.

Herta Müller
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
I wanted to get out of our thimble of a town, where every stone had eyes.

Herta Müller
The time for eating otrach orach is over. But not the hunger, which is always greater than we are.

Herta Müller
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
Half starved humans are really neither masculine nor feminine but genderless, like objects.

Herta Müller
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
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
How can you face the world if all you can say about yourself is that you're hungry. If you can't think of anything else.

Herta Müller
You can think all kinds of things. But you can't know for sure.

Herta Müller
The real secret is why love starts out with claws like a cat and then fades with time like a half-eaten mouse.

Herta Müller