Thomas Bernhard
Thomas Bernhard
Thomas Bernhardwas an Austrian novelist, playwright and poet. Bernhard, whose body of work has been called "the most significant literary achievement since World War II," is widely considered to be one of the most important German-speaking authors of the postwar era...
NationalityAustrian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth9 February 1931
CountryAustria
making-money fame motive
We publish only to satisfy out craving for fame; there's no other motive except the even baser one of making money....
literature
I avoid literature whenever possible, because whenever possible I avoid myself...
inspirational suicide people
Instead of committing suicide, people go to work.
disaster applause
Nothing but disaster follows from applause.
study sickness poetic
The study of sickness is the most poetic of the sciences.
perfidious society masturbators
misunderstood doe language
Everyone, he went on, speaks a language he does not understand, but which now and then is understood by others. That is enough to permit one to exist and at least to be misunderstood.
country thinking people
Those who live in the country get idiotic in time, without noticing it, for a while they think it's original and good for their health, but life in the country is not original at all, for anyone who wasn't born in and for the country it shows a lack of taste and is only harmful to their health. The people who go walking in the country walk right into their own funeral in the country and at the very least they lead a grotesque existence which leads them first into idiocy, then into an absurd death.
courage adversity faces
We only really face up to ourselves when we are afraid.
writing thinking order
We must allow ourselves to think, we must dare to think, even though we fail. It is in the nature of things that we always fail, because we suddenly find it impossible to order our thoughts, because the process of thinking requires us to consider every thought there is, every possible thought. Fundamentally we have always failed, like all the others, whoever they were, even the greatest minds. At some point, they suddenly failed and their system collapsed, as is proved by their writings, which we admire because they venture farthest into failure. To think is to fail, I thought.
men thinking people
The thinking man always finds himself in a gigantic orphanage in which people are continually proving to him that he has no parents.
moving together
All of living is nothing but a fervid attempt to move closer together.
perfect abhorrent pleasure
Our greatest pleasure, surely, is in fragments, just as we derive the most pleasure from life if we regard it as a fragment, whereas the whole and the complete and the perfect are basically abhorrent.
people terrible dangerous
Those are terrible people who don't like Glenn Gould... I will have nothing to do with such people, they are dangerous people.