"At a time I used to think that in a world without guards people would walk differently from the way we do in our country. Where people are allowed to think and write differently, I thought, they will ..."
- Herta Müller
"Boredom is fear's patience. Fear doesn't want to exaggerate. Only on occasion--and fear considers this very important--does it want to know how things stand with me."
"Today the grass listens when I speak of love. It seems to me that this word isn't honest even with itself."
"How do you have to live, I wondered, to be in harmony with what you honestly think?"
"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."
"I'm always telling myself I don't have many feelings. Even when something does affect me I'm only moderately moved. I almost never cry. It's not that I'm stronger than the ones with teary eyes, I'm we..."
"Jesus sleeps on the cross by the church door. When he wakes up, he'll be old. The air in the village will be brighter than his naked skin."
"No words are adequate for the suffering caused by hunger. To this day I have to show hunger that I escaped his grasp. Ever since I stopped having to go hungry, I literally eat life itself. And when I ..."
"The Russian commands sound like the name of the camp commandant. Shishtvanyanov: a gnashing and spluttering collection of ch, sh, tch, shch. We can't understand the actual words, but we sense the cont..."
"Tereza's death hurt me so much, it was as if I had two heads smashing into each other. One was full of mown love, the other of hate. I wanted the love to grow back. It grew like grass and straw, all m..."