Quotes by Thomas Bernhard

About Thomas Bernhard:

Thomas Bernhard is widely considered to be one of the most important German-speaking authors of the postwar era.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The only friends I have are the dead who have bequeathed their writings to me--I have no others.

Thomas Bernhard

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

Thomas Bernhard

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 ...

Thomas Bernhard

Very often we write down a sentence then another what we have to do is write it down at the proper time, otherwise it's lost.

Thomas Bernhard

We publish only to satisfy out craving for fame; there's no other motive except the even baser one of making money....

Thomas Bernhard

No he tenido las ilusiones de mi abuelo, pero no he evitado los mismos errores que él. El mundo no es tan importante como él creía, y todo lo que hay en él no tiene el valor que él temió durante toda su vida, y las palabras altisonantes y las f...

Thomas Bernhard

We must allow ourselves to think, we must dare to think, even though we fail. It is in the nature of things that we always fail, because we suddenly find it impossible to order our thoughts, because the process of thinking requires us to consider eve...

Thomas Bernhard

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.

Thomas Bernhard

I wondered whose job it was to blow sunshine into my ears.

Thomas Bernhard

In answer to a question you asked me not a long ago, a question I didn’t answer at the time…it is worth it. Love is a perilous dance too, you see. And if we stop dancing, we’ll die. Don’t ever stop dancing.

Thomas Bernhard

I’d allowed myself to feel love –yes, love– for another person in a way I’d once sworn to myself I never would. I’d become completely vulnerable, and now I’d been torn apart with hurt and catapulted onto a path I might never have taken ot...

Thomas Bernhard

Women were like rivers, their banks were unreachable, the night often rang with the cries of the drowned.

Thomas Bernhard

You’re the girl that I have been wanting. You’re the girl that I could see myself with forever. And most importantly, you’re the girl that I’ve fallen in love with.

Thomas Bernhard

Strength?” “Safety,” I said. And in that moment I realized that I’d always equated the two in my head, but they weren’t the same thing. Sometimes people were strongest at their most vulnerable, dangerous moments.

Thomas Bernhard

The facts are always frightening, and in all of us fear of the facts is constantly at work, constantly being fuelled; but this morbid fear must not lead us to conceal the facts and so to falsify the whole of human history -- which is of course part o...

Thomas Bernhard

Wir können uns einreden, dass wir mit einem Buch nicht allein sind, wie wir uns einreden können, dass wir mit einem Menschen nicht allein sind.

Thomas Bernhard

It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.

Thomas Bernhard

The anger and the brutality against everything can readily from one hour to the next be transformed into its opposite.

Thomas Bernhard

Those who live in the country get idiotic in time, without noticing it, for a while they think it's original and good for their health, but life in the country is not original at all, for anyone who wasn't born in and for the country it shows a lack ...

Thomas Bernhard

You've always lived a life of pretense, not a real life-- a simulated existence, not a genuine existence. Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretense, never genuine, never real.

Thomas Bernhard

Author Bio

  • NameThomas Bernhard
  • DescriptionAustrian writer
  • BornFebruary 9, 1931
  • DiedFebruary 12, 1989
  • CountryAustria
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist; Playwright; Screenwriter
  • WorksCorrection; Extinction; The Loser; Woodcutters
  • AwardsAnton Wildgans Prize; Georg Büchner Prize