28 Quotes by Cees Nooteboom

The world is a never-ending cross-reference.

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

Man has been thrown into the world. It had always made him think of Icarus and those other great tumblers, Ixion, Phaeton, Tantalus – all these jumpers without parachutes from a world of gods and heroes.

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

Wij zijn begonnen, wij zullen eindigen, en daartussen bestaan we, het heelal net zo goed als een geranium.

Memory is like a dog that lies down where it pleases.

I have never cared much for people. Most of them are cowards, conformists, muddleheads, moneygrubbers, and they infect each other.

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

He thought that, unlike most people, he had simply refused to let himself be brainwashed by newspapers, television, eschatologies, and philosophies into believing that “in spite of everything” this was an acceptable world simply because it existed. It would never become acceptable. Beloved maybe, acceptable never.