Steppenwolf Quotes

Every day new souls kept springing up [within me] beside the host of old ones, making clamorous demands and creating confusion; and now I saw as clearly as in a picture what an illusion my former personality had been. The few capacities and pursuits in which I happened to be strong had occupied all my attention, and I had painted a picture of myself as a person who was in fact nothing more than a most refined and educated specialist in poetry, music and philosophy; and as such I had lived, leaving all the rest of me to be a chaos of potentialities, instincts and impulses which I found an encumbrance and gave the label of Steppenwolf. ~ Hermann Hesse

Haller's sickness of the soul, as I now know, is not the eccentricity of a single individual, but the sickness of the times themselves, the neurosis of that generation to which Haller belongs, a sickness, it seems, that by no means attacks the weak and worthless only but, rather, precisely those who are strongest in spirit and richest in gifts. ~ Hermann Hesse

The Steppenwolf, however, first threw up his sharp, closely cropped head and sniffed around nervously before he either made any answer or announced his name. "Oh, it smells good here," he said, and at that he smiled and my aunt smiled too. ~ Hermann Hesse

As a body everyone is single, as a soul never ~ Hermann Hesse

I read Hesse's Steppenwolf thrice. The first time I was enchanted, the second time disappointed, the third time appalled. ~ Marcel Reich-Ranicki

A mere nothing suffices - and the lightning strikes. ~ Hermann Hesse

'Killer Joe' was originally written in 1991 and first produced in '93 at the Next Theater's Lab - a 40 seat black box theater in Evanston, Illinois - back when I was getting started. I was just 25 and I had been acting for awhile, but it was my first play and the one that really got me noticed, especially by Steppenwolf. ~ Tracy Letts

To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. ~ Hermann Hesse

Man designs for himself a garden with a hundred kinds of trees, a thousand kinds of flowers, a hundred kinds of fruit and vegetables. Suppose, then, that the gardener of this garden knew no other distinction between edible and inedible, nine-tenths of this garden would be useless to him. He would pull up the most enchanting flowers and hew down the noblest trees and even regard them with a loathing and envious eye. This is what the Steppenwolf does with the thousand flowers of his soul. What does not stand classified as either man or wolf he does not see at all. ~ Hermann Hesse

I started a theater called Steppenwolf. We've been very supportive of the veterans there. ~ Gary Sinise

Put 'em on and be yourself, mister alienated loner steppenwolf bemused distant meta-izing technocrat rationalist fucking shithead. ~ Neal Stephenson

let the sound take you away ~ Steppenwolf

Animals are sad as a rule," she went on. "And when a man is sad - I don't mean because he has a toothache or has lost some money, but because he sees, for once in a way, how it all is with life and everything, and is sad in earnest - he always looks a little like an animal. He looks not only sad, but more right and more beautiful than usual. That's how it is, and that's how you looked, Steppenwolf, when I saw you for the first time. ~ Hermann Hesse

I was a big J. Geils fan, a Steppenwolf fan and a Savoy Brown fan. ~ George Thorogood

My soul breathed once more. My eyes were opened. There were moments when I felt with a glow that I had only to snatch up my scattered images and raise my life as Harry Haller and as the Steppenwolf to the unity of one picture, in order to enter myself into the world of imagination and be immortal. Was not this, then, the goal set for the progress of every human life? ~ Hermann Hesse

It's like the high school production of something you saw at Steppenwolf, with the most gifted students in drama class playing the John Malkovich and Joan Allen roles. ~ Roger Ebert

I was only in one play at Steppenwolf, in the early days. ~ Douglas Wood

I've been blessed. Starting with Steppenwolf Theater and onward, learning from wonderful actors and getting to play with wonderful actors. ~ Jeff Perry

How foolish it is to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth! Solitude is independence. ~ Hermann Hesse

That man is not yet a finished creation but rather a challenge of the spirit; a distant possibility dreaded as much as it is desired; that the way towards it has only been covered for a short distance and with terrible agonies and ecstasies even by those few for whom it is the scaffold today and the monument tomorrow - all this the Steppenwolf, too, suspected. ~ Hermann Hesse

There was once a man, Harry, called the steppenwolf. He went on two legs, wore clothes and was a human being, but nevertheless he was in reality a wolf of the steppes. He had learned a good deal of all that people of a good intelligence can, and was a fairly clever fellow. What he had not learned, however, was this: to find contentment in himself and his own life. ~ Hermann Hesse

Most men will not swim before they are able to. Is that not witty? Naturally, they won't swim! They are born for the solid earth, not for the water. And naturally they wont think. They are made for life, not for thought. Yes, and he who thinks, what's more, he who makes thought his business, he may go far in it, but he has bartered the solid earth for the water all the same, and one day he will drown. ~ Hermann Hesse

Madness, in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom ~ Hermann Hesse

I would traverse not once more, but often the hell of my inner being. One day I would be a better hand at the game. One day I would learn how to laugh. Pablo was waiting for me, and Mozart too. ~ Hermann Hesse

He had thought more than other men, and in matters of the intellect he had that calm objectivity, that certainty of thought and knowledge, such as only really intellectual men have, who have no axe to grind, who never wish to shine, or to talk others down, or to appear always in the right. ~ Hermann Hesse