161 Quotes by Thomas Bernhard

He wanted to be an artist, an artist of life wasn't enough for him, although precisely this concept provides everything we need to be happy if we think about it.

The whole process of life is a process of deterioration in which everything—and this is the most cruel law—continually gets worse.

We always look for everything in the immediate proximity, that is a mistake.

Whatever condition we are in, we must always do what we want to do, and if we want to go on a journey, then we must do so and not worry about our condition, even if it's the worst possible condition, because, if it is, we're finished anyway, whether we go on the journey or not, and it's better to die having made the journey we're been longing for than to be stifled by our longing.

everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death

With its population made up of two categories of people, those who do business and those upon whom they prey, the city has only a painful life to offer the young person who goes there to learn and to study; for sooner or later anyone who lives there, whatever his constitution, becomes disturbed and is eventually deranged and destroyed by the city, often in the most deadly and insidious manner.

I don't belong to the masses, I've been against the masses all my life, and I'm not in favour of dogs.

Mais, lui, ne voulant pas renier son caractère, avait, avant de se suicider, brûlé l’œuvre de sa vie, la rendant au néant en quelques instants, après avoir consacré des dizaines d’années à la mener à bien, et il n’avait pas voulu la laisser à une postérité qui ne la méritait en aucun cas (Génie).

We have to keep company with supposedly bad characters if we are to survive and not succumb to mental atrophy. People of good character, so called, are the ones who end up boring us to death.