Top Elfriede Jelinek Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Elfriede Jelinek Biography

Elfriede Jelinek

Elfriede Jelinek (German: [ɛlˈfʀiːdə ˈjɛlinɛk]; born 20 October 1946) is an Austrian playwright and novelist. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004 for her "musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that, with extraordinary linguistic zeal, reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power."

Read about Elfriede Jelinek in Wikipedia

Random Authors

Elfriede Jelinek Quotes

It is not enough. . . simply to surrender oneself brainlessly to love, when it knocks at the door, one must also calculate because of later life, which does sometimes follow.

Doe, Door, Doors, Knocks, Life, Sometimes

Eroding solidarity paradoxically makes a society more susceptible to the construction of substitute collectives and fascisms of all kinds

Construction, Eroding, Kind, Paradoxically, Society, Substitutes

Vice is basically the love of failure.

Vices, Vice, Love, Basically, Failure

Sunday, the day for the language of leisure.

Day, Language, Leisure, Sunday

I do not want to have the feeling of writing "for eternity," so to speak.

Writing, Feelings, Want, Eternity, Speak

Women age early, and their mistake is not knowing where to hide all the time that lies behind them so that no one sees it. What are they to do, devour it like the umbilical cords of their children? Hell and damnation!

Age, Children, Like, Mistake, Women

Love points the way. Desire is its ignorant advisor.

Desire, Ignorant, Points, Way

It could draw from a greater reservoir of freedom. The irony could develop an even greater ease.

Ease, Irony, Draws, Reservoir, Develop

The first thing a proprietor learns, and painfully at that, is: Trust is fine, but control is better.

Control, Fine, Firsts, Learns, Painfully, Thing

Literature that keeps employing new linguistic and formal modes of expression to draft a panorama of society as a whole while at the same time exposing it, tearing the masks from its face - for me that would be deserving of an award.

Awards, Deserving It, Expression, Society, Keeps

I cannot stand public attention, I just can't. Of course, if I may I might write something instead

Writing, Attention, May, Instead, Write

Trust is fine, but control is better.

Control, Fine, Trust

Every day, a piece of music, a short story, or a poem dies because its existence is no longer justified in our time. And things that were once considered immortal have become mortal again, no one knows them anymore. Even though they deserve to survive.

Immortal, Justified, Piece, Pieces, Stories, Though

Characters on stage should be flat, like clothes in a fashion show: what you get should be no more than what you see. Psychological realism is repulsive, because it allows us to escape unpalatable reality by taking shelter in the “luxuriousness” of personality, losing ourselves in the depth of individual character. The writer's task is to block this manoeuvre, to chase us off to a point from which we can view the horror with a dispassionate eye.

Block, Character, Escape, Fashion, Flat, Luxuriousness

I do not fight against men, but against the system that is sexist.

Fight, Fighting, Men, Sexist

Seek and you shall find the repulsive things you secretly hope to find.

Hope, Repulsive, Secretly, Seek, Things

Very few women wait for Mr. Right. Most women take the first and worst Mr. Wrong.

Firsts, Mr Right, Take, Wait, Waiting, Women

My plays are made up of long monologues, which is similar to prose working with the language

Language, Long, Play, Plays, Similar

He lies like a book. And he reads a lot of books.

Book, Books, Lies, Like, Lying, Reads

I have the feeling it will influence my future writing to the extent that without any material worries I could develop a greater ease, even lightheartedness, in my writing

Writing, Worry, Feelings, Develop, Influence, Worries

1