14 Quotes by Marlen Haushofer

I knew I couldn’t go on like this, but I’d never been capable of simply nipping an anxiety in the bud. I always had to wait until it was ripe and mature and fell from me.

I can allow myself to write the truth; all the people for whom I have lied throughout my life are dead.

Maybe I’m afraid that if I could do otherwise I would gradually cease to be a human being, and would soon be creeping about, dirty and stinking, emitting incomprehensible noises. Not that I’m afraid of becoming an animal. That wouldn’t be too bad, but a human being can never become just an animal; he plunges beyond, into the abyss.

There is no impulse more rational than love. It makes life more bearable for the lover and the loved one.

Suddenly I had a flash of insight: I am a monster, I realized, a monster that wants to stalk through the woods, free and alone, and cannot even bear so much as the touch of a branch on its skin.