Herta Muller
Herta Muller
Herta Mülleris a Romanian-born German novelist, poet, essayist and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Nițchidorf, Timiș County in Romania, her native language is German. Since the early 1990s she has been internationally established, and her works have been translated into more than twenty languages...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth17 August 1953
CountryGermany
allowed arouse assert attempt freer mouth ourselves time
The more words we are allowed to take, the freer we become. If our mouth is banned, then we attempt to assert ourselves through gestures, even objects. They are more difficult to interpret, and take time before they arouse suspicion.
keeps sees
In writing, one searches, and that is what keeps one writing, that one sees and experiences things from another angle entirely; one experiences oneself during the process of writing.
hurt pain hands
My flesh was burning where the skin was scraped off my knees, and I was afraid that I couldn't be alive anymore with so much pain, and at the same time I knew I was alive because it hurt. I was afraid that death would find its way into me through this open knee and I quickly covered my knee with my hands.
sight people everyday
Everyday brought me further away from other people, I had been placed out of the world's sight, as if in a cupboard, and I hoped it would stay that way. I developed a yearning for being alone, unkempt, untended.
country able would-be
If only the right person would have to leave, everyone else would be able to stay in the country.
hurt eye differences
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 weaker. They have courage. When all you are is skin and bones, feelings are a brave thing. I'm more of a coward. The difference is minimal though, I just use my strength not to cry. When I do allow myself a feeling, I take the part that hurts and bandage it up with a story that doesn't cry, that doesn't dwell on homesickness.
long silence littles
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.
hands insanity demented
Only the demented would not have raised their hands in the great hall. They had exchanged fear for insanity".
fool unbearable speak
When we don't speak, said Edgar, we become unbearable, and when we do, we make fools of ourselves.
wells invitations
In Romanian society, I am not particularly well-liked. I don't often receive invitations.
risk spy might
If you live with death threats, you need friends. So you have to risk that they might spy on you.
sick effort world
What can be said about chronic hunger. Perhaps that there's a hunger that can make you sick with hunger. That it comes in addition to the hunger you already feel. That there is a hunger which is always new, which grows insatiably, which pounces on the never-ending old hunger that already took such effort to tame. How can you face the world if all you can say about yourself is that you're hungry.
eye towns stones
I wanted to get out of our thimble of a town, where every stone had eyes.
writing hands silent
What can't be said can be written. Because writing is a silent act, a labor from the head to the hand.