Cees Nooteboom quotes

Cees Nooteboom is a Dutch novelist, poet, and travel writer, celebrated for his evocative prose and philosophical themes. His works often explore the intersections of travel, history, and identity. He has received numerous international literary awards and remains a prominent figure in European literature. Here are 20 of his quotes:

Conversations consist for the most part of things one does not say.

Cees Nooteboom

The world is a never-ending cross-reference.

Cees Nooteboom

Every period in history has it's own punishments, and ours has a multitude.

Cees Nooteboom

From the number of self-murderers he had known-you had to put it that way, for the fact that someone died rounded off your knowledge of that person, if only because he or she could no longer present you with surprises-he was able to conclude that his circle of acquaintance must consist of a thousand people. If he were to invite all these voluntary dead to tea, two boxes of cream cakes from Berkhof's would scarcely suffice. (Page 20)

Cees Nooteboom

I had breezed home on the wings of five gins.

Cees Nooteboom

It would be like this when you were really old-a city full of imaginary houses and women, rooms and girls.

Cees Nooteboom

Besides, I simply had to get back to my books right away, because the company of most people, once the predictable events have taken their course, does not inspire conversation on my part.

Cees Nooteboom

My tears are only triggered by kitsch.

Cees Nooteboom

We will feel the draft blowing through the cracks in the structure of causality.

Cees Nooteboom

For the sake of having her with me I had to tolerate the shadow of a tracksuited poet, but one who has taken the guise of a man in love will indiscriminately eat and drink platefuls of thistles, barrels of vinegar.

Cees Nooteboom

It is a peculiarity of time that in retrospect it appears so compact, an indivisible solid object, a dish with only one smell and one flavor. (Page 4)

Cees Nooteboom

Man is a sad mammal that combs its hair.

Cees Nooteboom

Through men ... you learn how the world is. Through women you learn what it is.

Cees Nooteboom

I find it unbearable to need a body in order to exist.

Cees Nooteboom

I am a hindrance to the world, and the world is a hindrance to me.

Cees Nooteboom

Language is something you inherit, it's never just you doing the talking, which helps when you're pretending.

Cees Nooteboom

As far as he could see, the world was moving, in an orderly capitalist fashion, toward a logical, perhaps provisional, perhaps permanent, end.

Cees Nooteboom

Surely one zoo in the world should have the courage to draw the ultimate conclusion about our ancestry? A cage with Homo Sapiens in all its varying forms, perhaps then we would understand ourselves better. The question of course is whether the other animals would approve of it.

Cees Nooteboom