100 Quotes by Herta Müller

I speak a kind of Hapsburg language.

Anything in literature, including memory, is second-hand.

One is either destroyed by adapting or for refusing to.

If, in the very first pages, I'm forced to read gratuitous phrases or banal metaphors, I won't be able to get inside the story. Only if the sentences 'sparkle' can I get hooked.

I never wanted to be a writer.

I find any kind of 'organizing' very difficult. And that has irksome consequences when it comes to books, since I've often wound up buying books twice because I couldn't find what I already have in all my mess.

We didn't have any books at home. Not even children's books or fairy tales. The only 'fantastic' stories came from religion class. And I took them all very literally, that God sees everything, and so I felt I was always being watched. Or that dead people were in Heaven right over our village.

I write in order to bear witness to life.

I learned Romanian very late, when I was fifteen, in town, and I wanted to learn it. I like the language very much.