152 Quotes by Elias Canetti

Every command leaves behind a painful sting in the person who is forced to carry it out.

Every command consists of momentum and sting. The momentum forces the recipient to act, and to act in accordance with the content of the command; the sting remains behind in him. When a command functions normally and as one expects, there is nothing to be seen of the sting; it is hidden and unsuspected and may only reveal its existence by some faint, scarcely perceptible recalcitrance before the command obeyed.

Each organism raises its head over a field of corpses, smiles into the sun, and declares life good.

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation, and it seems most true when it eschews artistic devices of any sort.

For him [Kafka], the most tormenting thing about his notion of marriage must have been its ruling out the possibility of one's ever becoming so small as to be able to vanish: one has to be there.

The family becomes rigid and hard when it excludes others from its meals; those that must be fed provide a natural pretext for the exclusion of others. The hollowness of this pretext is revealed by families which have no children and yet make not the slightest move to share their meal with others. The 'family' of two is man's most contemptible creation.

Death is a scandal. The machine is functioning, we are all hostages

At home in the nursery, I usually played alone. Actually, I seldom played, I spoke to the wallpaper. The many dark circles in the pattern of the wallpaper seemed like people to me. I made up stories in which they appeared, either I told them the stories or they played with me, I never got tired of the wallpaper people and I could talk to them for hours.

A murder shared with many others, which is not only safe and permitted, but indeed recommended, is irresistible to the great majority of men.