Agota Kristf Quotes

And death hasn't come. It never does come when you call it. It enjoys torturing us. I've been calling for it for years and it pays me no attention

Seen nothing? Idiot! We have all the work and all the worry: children to feed, wounds to tend. Once the war is over, you men are all heroes. The dead: heroes. The survivors: heroes. The maimed: heroes. That's why you invented war. It's your war. You wanted it, so get on with it – heroes, my ass!

My walls no longer protect me. They never protected me. Their solidity is mere illusion, their whiteness is stained

Crying is no use, you know. We never cry, even though we aren't men yet, like you

I go to bed and before falling asleep I talk to Lucas in my head the way I have for many years. What I tell him is just about what I usually do. I tell him that if he's dead he's lucky and I'd very much like to be in his place. I tell him that he got the better deal, that it is I who is pulling the greater weight. I tell him that life is totally useless, that it's nonsense, an aberration, infinite suffering, the invention of a non-God whose evil surpasses understanding.

We weren't trying to be kind. We've brought you these things because you absolutely need them. That's all.' -- Ágota Kristóf. The Notebook

– Then why are you begging?
– To find out what effect it has and to observe people's reaction

Yes, sir. Blackmail…Yes. It's deplorable that we've been forced to this

I had only one desire: to leave, to walk, to die, whatever. I wanted to get away, never come back, disappear, melt away into the forest, the clouds, no longer have memories, forget, forget.

I answer that I try to write true stories but that at a given point the story becomes unbearable because of it's very truth, and then I have to change it. I tell her that I try to tell my story but all of a sudden I can't-I don't have the courage, it hurts too much. And so I embellish everything and describe things not as they happened but the way I wished they happened.
She says, "Yes, there are lives sadder than the saddest of books." I say, "Yes. No book, no matter how sad, can be as sad as a life.

Don't be sentimental. Everything dies

– Where are they now?
– The dead are nowhere and everywhere

– The revolution has achieved nothing
– History will be the judge of that

Death will obliterate everything soon

On our way home we throw the apples, the biscuits, the chocolate and the coins in the tall grass by the roadside. It is impossible to throw away the stroking on our hair

You don't want to fight the enemy anymore?"
"I don't want to fight anyone. I have no enemies. I want to go home.

As soon as you begin to think, you can no longer love life

Later, with time, we no longer need a shawl over our eyes or grass in our ears. The one playing the blind man simply turns his gaze inward, and the deaf one shuts his ears to all sounds

People are cruel. They like to kill. It's the war that has taught them that. And there are explosives lying around everywhere

Every one of us commits a fatal mistake sometime in his life. When we realize it, the damage is already done

I don't think. I can't allow myself the luxury. I've lived with fear since I was a child

The people have already atoned
For the past and the future

Physical wounds don't matter when I receive them. But if I had to inflict them on someone else, that would wound me in a way I couldn't bear