Thomas Bernhard quotes

Thomas Bernhard was an Austrian novelist, playwright, and poet renowned for his provocative and distinctive style. His works often explore themes of isolation, illness, and critique of Austrian society. He is remembered as one of the most influential and controversial figures in contemporary German-language literature. Here are 25 of his quotes:

It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad. (Thomas Bernhard)
Instead of committing suicide, people go to work. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
The thinking man always finds himself in a gigantic orphanage in which people are continually proving to him that he has no parents. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
After all, there is nothing but failure. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
I did not want to be anything, and naturally I did not want to turn myself into a mere profession: all I ever wanted was to be myself. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
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. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
You are never truly together with one you love until the person in question is dead and actually inside you. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
Only when I am by seawater can I truly breathe, to say nothing of my ability to think. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
The anger and the brutality against everything can readily from one hour to the next be transformed into its opposite. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
Very often we write down a sentencethen anotherwhat we have to do is write it down at the proper time, otherwise it's lost. (Thomas Bernhard)
We have to keep company with supposedly bad characters if we are to survive and not succumb to mental atrophy. People of good character, so called, are the ones who end up boring us to death. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
You've always lived a life of pretense, not a real life-- a simulated existence, not a genuine existence. Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretense, never genuine, never real. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
The only friends I have are the dead who have bequeathed their writings to me - I have no others. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
The study of sickness is the most poetic of the sciences. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
I avoid literature whenever possible, because whenever possible I avoid myself. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
Women were like rivers, their banks were unreachable, the night often rang with the cries of the drowned. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
All my life I have had the utmost admiration for suicides. I have always considered them superior to me in every way. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
To wake up one day and be Steinway and Glen in One... Glen Steinway, Steinway Glen, all for Bach. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
People keep a dog and are ruled by this dog, and even Schopenhauer was ruled in the end not by his head, but by his dog. This fact is more depressing than any other. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
Everything is what it is, that's all. If we keep attaching meanings and mysteries to everything we perceive, everything we see that is, and to everything that goes on inside us, we are bound to go crazy sooner or later, I thought. (Thomas Bernhard)
Nothing but disaster follows from applause. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
A criminal is undoubtedly a poor soul, who is punished for his poverty. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
One day you're cut off, at the very start you're cut off and can't go back, the language you learn and the whole business of walking and all the rest is for the sake of the single thought, how to get back again. View quote
Thomas Bernhard
What is ridiculous about human beings, Doctor,' the prince said, 'is actually their total incapacity to be ridiculous. View quote
Thomas Bernhard

Thomas Bernhard

Thomas Bernhard - Image
Photo: Monozigote, CC BY-SA 4.0
Occupation: Austrian Playwright
Born: February 9, 1931
Died: February 12, 1989
Quotes count: 25
Wikipedia: Thomas Bernhard

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