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Quotes from Kaddish for a Child Not Born — Imre Kertész

1929–2016 Hungary

← All quotes by Imre Kertész

18 quotes

On the other hand, what is really irrational and what truly cannot be explained is not evil but, contrarily, the good.

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

The world is not our imagination but our nightmare, full of inconceivable surprises.

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

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

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

If one takes the path of success, then one ends up either successful or unsuccessful, there is no third alternative.

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

Nothing upsets me as much as a shop window jammed full of objects; such windows literally depress, sadden, even demoralize me.

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

My body is foreign to me that body that sustains me and will, ultimately, kill me.

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

I do what I have to do, although I don’t know why I have to.

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

How can we do justice even when it concerns truth itself, since for me only one truth exists, my truth, even if it is a delusion, yes, my delusion; my delusion.

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

"No" — I could never be another person’s father, fate, god,
"No" — it should never happen to another child, what happened to me; my childhood. (Auschwitz).

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

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

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

Failure alone remains as the one single accomplishable experience

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

I am still here, although I don’t know why; accidentally, I guess, as I was born; I am as much or as little accomplice to my staying alive as I was to my birth.

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

The sentence "Auschwitz cannot be explained" is faulty simply from a formal point of view, for anything that is has an explanation, even if by necessity a merely self-serving faulty, so so explanation.

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

I stayed alive therefore I am.

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

"Auschwitz cannot be explained." And yet, it doesn’t take a Wittgenstein to notice that the sentence is faulty even from the point of pure linguistic logic

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

For me this is a fact, writing is necessity, I don’t know why, but it seems it was the only solution offered to me, even if it doesn’t solve anything; still it doesn't leave me…

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

By way of that wretched sentence "Auschwitz cannot be explained" is the wretched author explaining that we should be silent concerning Auschwitz, that Auschwitz doesn’t exist, or, rather, that it didn’t, for the only facts that cannot be explained are those that don’t or didn’t exist.

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

I read somewhere; while God still existed one sustained a dialogue with God, and now that He no longer exists one has to sustain a dialogue with other people, I guess, or, better still, with oneself, that is to say, one talks or mumbles to oneself.

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Imre Kertész (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.