Imre Kertész - Fate Quotes

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Cognitively we don't know and will never discover what occasions the cause of our existence, we don't know the purpose of our existence and we don't know why we have to disappear from here once we have been placed here, I don't know, why I have to live this fragmentary existence, which happened to be my lot, instead of a life that perhaps does exist somewhere. Why did I get this lot? This sex, this body, this awareness, this geographic setting, this fate, this language, this history, this rented room?

Imre Kertész

Man, when reduced to nothing, or in other words a survivor, is not tragic but comic, because he has no fate.

Imre Kertész

"No" — I could never be another person's father, fate, god,
"No" — it should never happen to another child, what happened to me; my childhood. (Auschwitz).

Imre Kertész

What we usually mean by fate is what we least understand, that is to say, ourselves, that subversive, unknown individual constantly plotting against us, whom, estranged and alienated but still bowing with disgust before his might, we call, for the of simplicity, fate.

Imre Kertész