12 Imre Kertesz Quotes for You to Enjoy

Imre Kertesz

Hungarian Author

Born: Nov 9, 1929

Died: Mar 31, 2016

About Every Experience Life World You

Related authors: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn C. S. Lewis Frederick Douglass George Orwell Helen Keller Henry David Thoreau Mark Twain Zig Ziglar

A good autobiography is like a document: a mirror of the age on which people can 'depend.' In a novel, by contrast, it's not the facts that matter, but precisely what you add to the facts. Imre Kertesz

Good You Age People Matter Mirror Depend Add Facts Like Document Contrast Precisely Autobiography Which Novel

What I discovered in Auschwitz is the human condition, the end point of a great adventure, where the European traveler arrived after his two-thousand-year-old moral and cultural history. Imre Kertesz

Great History Moral Point Adventure Arrived His Condition Discovered Cultural Auschwitz End Human Where After Human Condition European Traveler

I have not changed my opinion that the Holocaust is a trauma of European civilization. Imre Kertesz

Changed Civilization Opinion Holocaust European Trauma

No one in my family wrote. And there was no real introduction. I suppose I somehow blundered into it when I was about six or seven years old. I was asked what present I would like, and, without knowing why, I responded that I would like a journal. It was a beautiful journal - so beautiful that I didn't want to sully it. Imre Kertesz

Writing changed my life. It has an existential dimension, and that's the same for every writer. Every artist has a moment of awakening, of happening upon an idea that grabs hold of you, regardless of whether you are a painter or a writer. Imre Kertesz

Life You Writing My Life Every Changed Dimension Writer Idea Existential Same Artist Hold Happening Regardless Whether Moment Painter Awakening

I was interned in Auschwitz for one year. I didn't bring back anything, except for a few jokes, and that filled me with shame. Then again, I didn't know what to do with this fresh experience. For this experience was no literary awakening, no occasion for professional or artistic introspection. Imre Kertesz

When we write about Auschwitz, we must know that Auschwitz, in a certain sense at least, suspended literature. One can only write a black novel about Auschwitz or - you should excuse the expression - a cheap serial, which begins in Auschwitz and is still not over. Imre Kertesz

You Black Sense Must About Only Write Cheap Over Excuse Know Least Still Auschwitz Begins Suspended Literature Which Certain Should Serial Novel Expression

It is often said of me - some intend it as a compliment, others as a complaint - that I write about a single subject: the Holocaust. I have no quarrel with that. Why shouldn't I accept, with certain qualifications, the place assigned to me on the shelves of libraries? Imre Kertesz

The Holocaust survivor who knows Auschwitz through the experience of suffering observes it all from the perspective assigned to him. He keeps silent or gives interviews to the Spielberg Foundation, he accepts the compensation payments promised him after a fifty-year delay, or, if he is prominent, he makes a speech in the Swedish Academy. Imre Kertesz

Suffering Experience Perspective Delay Interviews Prominent Promised Spielberg Silent Gives Through He Academy Him Knows Accepts Makes Auschwitz Survivor After Holocaust Swedish Payments Who Foundation Assigned Keeps Compensation Speech

A book is either autobiography or a novel. Imre Kertesz

Book Autobiography Either Novel

If there is such a thing as freedom, then there is no fate. Imre Kertesz

Freedom Fate Then Such A Thing Thing

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