Heinrich Boll Quotes

I don't trust Catholics," I said, "because they take advantage of you."
"And Protestants?" he asked with a laugh.
"I loathe the way they fumble around with their consciences."
"And atheists?" He was still laughing.
"They bore me because all they ever talk about is God.

... she said she would not sign any deposition containing the word "amorous" instead of "advances". For her the difference was of crucial significance, and one of the reasons she had separated from her husband was that he had never been amorous but had consistently made advances.

Literature has its own life, even in a dictatorship like the Soviet Union.

Politicians, ideologists, theologians and philosophers try time and again to provide solutions with nothing remaining: prefab solved problems.

Medals don't suit me. I'm not that kind of guy.

The war is not planned. I don't believe that any responsible person plans it. But it's thought as possible.

I will never forget the moment when I was liberated by the American Army. I will never forget those very young boys coming up the hill, who had to take me a prisoner to liberate me.

There are some strange unrecognized forms of prostitution with which prostitution itself is an honest trade: at least you get something for your money.

My most interesting correspondence is with my translators. I marvel at their sensitivity over certain passages that just anyone, even if he knows German well, would not appreciate.

Have you read any book from "heinrich boll"?he is my faverit writer . what do u think about his books?

Behind every word a whole world is hidden that must be imagined.

I was born December 21, 1917, in Cologne, on the Rhine, the son of the sculptor and cabinet-maker, Viktor Boell, and his wife, Maria, nee Hermanns.

Because the completion of labour service was a precondition for permission to study at the university, I was able to begin my studies of Germanistics and Classical Philology during the summer term of 1939.

I am a clown...and I collect moments.

If Continental tea is like a faded yellow telegraph form, in these islands to the west of Ostend it has the dark, glimmering tones of Russian icons, before the milk gives it a color similar to the complexion of an overfed baby; on the Continent weak tea is served in fragile porcelain, here it is casually poured into thick earthenware cups from battered metal teapots, a heavenly brew to restore the traveler, dirt cheap too.

For the outsider
and everyone in this world is an outsider in relation to everyone else
something always seems worse or better than it does for the one directly concerned, whether that something is good luck or bad luck, an unhappy love affair or an 'artistic decline'.

Humor is really one of the hardest things to define, very hard. And it's very ambiguous. You have it, or you don't. You can't attain it.

For me, at least, much of the German I see and hear sounds stranger than Swedish, a language of which I unfortunately understand very little.

One would like to know, for most people, being denied reliable telepathic communication, reach for the phone, which they feel is more reliable.

One ought to go too far, in order to know how far one can go.

To cling to the past is hypocrisy, because no one knows those moments.

If the dead could speak there would be no more war.

Feelings can kill such good hard things as love and hate.

It is still possible, in an election, to use the word emigrant in such a way that it damages one's opponent,

Many writers are radical. I am not, because of my age and because of my terrible fear of demagogy.

Between 1950 and 1951, I worked as a temporary employee in the Cologne Bureau of Statistics. From summer 1951 on, I have lived as a freelance writer with a fixed postal address in Cologne but with a continually shifting place of work.

I long for the time of no more departures. It has something to do with age, probably.