161 Quotes by Thomas Bernhard

The thinking man always finds himself in a gigantic orphanage in which people are continually proving to him that he has no parents.

All of living is nothing but a fervid attempt to move closer together.

Our greatest pleasure, surely, is in fragments, just as we derive the most pleasure from life if we regard it as a fragment, whereas the whole and the complete and the perfect are basically abhorrent.

Those are terrible people who don't like Glenn Gould... I will have nothing to do with such people, they are dangerous people.

Everyone is a virtuoso on his own instrument, but together they add up to an intolerable cacophony.

In theory we understand people, but in practice we can't put up with them, I thought, deal with them for the most part reluctantly and always treat them from our point of view. We should observe and treat people not from our point of view but from all angles, I thought, associate with them in such a way that we can say we associate with them so to speak in a completely unbiased way, which however isn't possible, since we actually are always biased against everybody.

Everything is what it is, that's all. If we keep attaching meanings and mysteries to everything we perceive, everything we see that is, and to everything that goes on inside us, we are bound to go crazy sooner or later, I thought.

The art we need is the art of bearing the unbearable.

After all, there is nothing but failure.