Elfriede Jelinek Quotes

Ah, lust! How one would like to make it the cornerstone of self! But I wouldn't go ahead and build on it if I were you.

~ Elfriede Jelinek

The moment workers can afford too little they rebel. The last time this was a real danger was 1950. Communists took advantage of supply problems and stirred up gullible people against their very own country.

~ Elfriede Jelinek

No art can possibly comfort HER then, even though art is credited with so many things, especially an ability to offer solace. Sometimes, of course, art creates the suffering in the first place.

~ Elfriede Jelinek

She will prolong her life by the length of her story, even though time will wear on inexorably as she tells it, thus depriving her of the chance to have a new experience.

~ Elfriede Jelinek

Sunday, the day for the language of leisure.

~ Elfriede Jelinek

I only enjoy what I can see, because I don't feel anything. For example, your new wallpaper. I like it and it can stay, it's quiet and it keeps quiet at least. Luckily I don't have to feel it, just see it.

~ Elfriede Jelinek

Many young people are still driven to art, as in olden times. Most of them are driven by their parents, who know nothing about art—only that it exists.

~ Elfriede Jelinek

I, however, have really never been anywhere yet, not because some sins or other could wrap themselves around me there, but because I'd rather sin at home, where God even announces the weather to me in advance on TV, slowly, so that I can write it down, in case it's worth the proper guilt. Sinning is enough, there's no need for surprises as well.

~ Elfriede Jelinek

The Ph.D is one of the chosen who know that some things can never be fathomed, no matter how hard you try. What good are explanations? There is no possibility of explaining how such a work [Mozart's Requiem, in the instance] could ever have come into being. (The same holds true for certain poems, which should not be analyzed either.)

~ Elfriede Jelinek

Her body is one big refrigerator, where Art is well stored.

~ Elfriede Jelinek

The mob not only grabs hold of art without being entitled to do so, but it also enters the artist. It takes up residence inside the artist and smashes a few holes in the wall, windows to the outer world: The mob wants to be seen.

~ Elfriede Jelinek

Stealing isn't so easy, often it's hard work, otherwise we'd all be doing it.

~ Elfriede Jelinek

Money never goes out of fashion.

~ Elfriede Jelinek

Everyone wants to look for something of their own, a house of their own, a child of their own, a partner of their own, entirely for themselves alone. No one is satisfied with a room of their own any more.

~ Elfriede Jelinek

A woman who becomes famous through her work reduces her erotic value. A woman is permitted to chat or babble, but speaking in public with authority is still the greatest transgression.

~ Elfriede Jelinek

It could draw from a greater reservoir of freedom. The irony could develop an even greater ease.

~ Elfriede Jelinek