Herta Muller

Happiness may perhaps be shared. But not luck, sadly.

— Herta Muller

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

— Herta Muller

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 Muller

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

— Herta Muller

The world is not a costume ball,

— Herta Muller

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

— Herta Muller

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 Muller

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

— Herta Muller

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 Muller

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

— Herta Muller

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 Muller

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 Muller

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 Muller

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 Muller

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

— Herta Muller

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

— Herta Muller

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

— Herta Muller

Hunger devours nearly all the artistry.

— Herta Muller

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

— Herta Muller

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

— Herta Muller

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

— Herta Muller

Inside the camp the we-form is singular.

— Herta Muller

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

— Herta Muller