19 Quotes by Josef Winkler

Wenn mich im Kärntner Drautal nicht so viele Menschen verachten und hassen würden, hätte ich mich schon längst den Garaus gemacht, aber denen den Gefallen tun? Nur über meine Leiche! Nein, nein, es bleibt dabei, die Lebenden sollen doch nicht von den Toten auferstehn, denn bei den Toten bin ich gerne, sie tun mir nichts und sind auch Menschen.

The wet skeletons of two young hedgehogs still lay on the floor of Hell.

In the black eye sockets of the dead, and over the thousands of molehills spread throughout the plains, the snow fell noiselessly. Only the bandy-legged wolf, wandering over my footprints among the crosses on the graves, did not leap over the cemetery walls, on this long night.

For three days the child lay in his parents' house, surrounded by spring flowers, narcissus, tulips, and Christmas roses, in a sealed coffin, small & white.

While Jonathan lay on his deathbed in his parents' house, his bluish red rope burns and strangulation bruises covered with a fresh garland of carnations, purple and aromatic, from the garden, and his corpse had turned wax-yellow and his fingernails blue, his mother, in a black dress, kept vigil through the night, near the two candles that lit up his face to the left and right of the sofa, never once closing her eyes.

The corpse fluid had dripped onto the brown Carinthian suit of one of the pallbearers, & he vomited beside a funeral wreath propped up against a garden fence. On its black ribbon, in golden letters, was written A Last Goodbye.

A twisted countenance overcame her in death. Her cheeks and mouth were deeply sunken. Liver mortis dotted her face and hands. Moreover, the process of decomposition was so advanced, it was impossible to expect that the funeral guests remain seated, praying their rosary before her open coffin.

Und wenn ich morgens auf meinem aus dem georgischen Dorf Besch-taschen stammenden Gebetsteppich knie, lasse ich den zahnlosen Bischof wieder aufleben, der ein enthäutetes, noch blutendes, aber ausgeweidetes Lamm mit einer Auferstehungsfahne dreimal im Zeichen des Kreuzes in die Höhe hebt und schreit: Hitler von Nazareth, König der Juden! denn ich habe so einen Haß auf die Katholische Kirche, daß ich am liebsten mit einer Kirchturmspitze aufs Herzjesu zulaufen möchte.

Before the presents, Maximilian and his brother Reinhard would bathe together in the smoke kitchen in a wood tub held together by iron rings. Cursing when one of them had peed in the bathwater, they would lather themselves with a bar of turpentine soap with a stag stamped on its surface, dry their lean white bodies, the genitals still hairless, with a coarse towel beside the glowing red griddle of the wood-burning stove, and put on clean underwear, ironed shirts, and gray wool socks.