"Everyone here makes a botch of his life. That's the local specialty, the genius loci. Anyone who doesn't botch up his life here simply has no talent."

Imre Kertész Literature See all quotes by Imre Kertész →

React to this quote

More by Imre Kertész

“You just sit here and tolerate it, the same way everything in this country is tolerated. Every deception, every lie, every bullet in the brains. Just as you are already tolerating bullets in the brains that will be implemented only after the bullet is put in your brains.”

“Man, when reduced to nothing, or in other words a survivor, is not tragic but comic, because he has no fate.”

“Man is always a little at fault, that’s all.”

“At any rate I found myself writing because I had to write, although I didn’t know why.”

“Anyone who wants something else is Jewish.”

“I am sick of atrocities, though these are now the natural order of our world. And I would still like to act!”

Resonant Thoughts

"I know something of the good of Moammar Gadhafi that made me to love him as a brother and to feel a great sense of loss at his assassination, He died in honor, fighting for the Libya that he believed …"

— Louis Farrakhan

Music1933

#life

"That is all there is to the story. Catherine died and you will die and I will die and that is all I can promise you."

— Ernest Hemingway

Literature1899–1961

#life

"All this fame and money, which have so thrilled me when they came to others, leave me cold when they come to me. I am not an ascetic, but I don't know what to do with them, and my daily life has never…"

— E. M. Forster

Literature1879–1970

#life

"In order for us to maintain our way of living, we must, in a broad sense, tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves. It is not necessary that the lies be particularly believable. The lies a…"

— Derrick Jensen

Social Activism1956–2017

#life