Novelists From Germany

"An intellectual who accommodates the ruling caste betrays the spirit. For the spirit is not conservative and grants no privileges. It dissolves; it equalizes; and it pushes through the ruins of hundreds of castles toward the final fulfillment of truth and justice, and their completion, even if it is the completion of death."

"The prohibition of the expression of the sex drive, i.e., between consenting adults in private, lies outside the legal sphere."

"Until my dying day I will look back with pride that I found the courage to come face to face in battle against the spectre which for time immemorial has been injecting poison into me and into men of my nature. Many have been driven to suicide because all their happiness in life was tainted. Indeed, I am proud that I found the courage to deal the initial blow to the hydra of public contempt."

"The Urning is not by a hair’s breadth any more dangerous to immature boys than the genuine man is to immature girls. For the rest, I gladly leave the child molester to his deserved punishment by the law. Let the integrity of a will-less minor be sacred to every Urning."

"Until now science has not sought to investigate this passive animal magnetism (by no means an isolated phenomenon), although the doctor, the anthropologist and physiologist, the jurist, the psychologist, and the moralist could cultivate an entirely new field. In fact they have made not the slightest effort to investigate its nature: rather (misled by poorly understood Bible passages and by laws based on such Bible passages—laws whose moral value stands on the same level as those against witchcraft and heresy in the Middle Ages) they have believed they should ignore or disdain it with hatred and scorn, examples of which are in scientific books."

"Sunt mihi barba maris, artus, corpusque virile, His inclusa quidem. Sed sum maneoque puella"

"A physical-mental characteristic of mine is a certain passive magnetism of the animal world... The mental-physical passive animal magnetism mentioned is passive, not active, for the reason that the person for whom it is a characteristic does not attract, but rather feels himself attracted, just as a passive magnetism dwells in a piece of soft iron, since it does not attract, but is attracted by the steel magnet, whereas active magnetism is in the attracting steel magnet (perhaps a passive magnetism as well, but at least an active is there)."

"Karl Heinrich Ulrichs was the first to formulate a scientific theory of homosexuality. Indeed, his theory implicated, as Klaus Müller has emphasized, “the first scientific theory of sexuality altogether” (1990, 100). It was set forth and elaborated in five writings published in 1864 to 1865. The series of writings was continued—there were twelve in all, the last appearing in 1879—but with only slight revisions in the theory, Ulrichs’s intention in his writings was not merely explanatory, but also—and especially—emancipatory. This was based on his view that the condition of being homosexual is inborn. This was a major departure from previous and subsequent theories that saw the practice of homosexuality/“sodomy” as an acquired vice. In this Ulrichs was the first in a long and continuing line of researchers who believe that a proof of the “naturaless” of homosexuality, that is, the discovery of a biological basis for it, will lead to equal legal and social treatment of hetero- and homosexuals."

"In 1870, Ulrichs gestured toward likely biological underpinnings of homosexuality as an argument for gay rights, arguing that a male homosexual has inalienable rights. His sexual orientation is a right established by nature. Legislators have no right to veto nature; no right to persecute nature in the course of its work; no right to torture living creatures who are subject to those drives nature gave them."

"It is not the terrible occurrences that no one is spared, — a husband’s death, the moral ruin of a beloved child, long, torturing illness, or the shattering of a fondly nourished hope, — it is none of these that undermine the woman’s health and strength, but the little daily recurring, body and soul devouring care s. How many millions of good housewives have cooked and scrubbed their love of life away! How many have sacrificed their rosy checks and their dimples in domestic service, until they became wrinkled, withered, broken mummies. The everlasting question: ‘what shall I cook today,’ the ever recurring necessity of sweeping and dusting and scrubbing and dish-washing, is the steadily falling drop that slowly but surely wears out her body and mind. The cooking stove is the place where accounts are sadly balanced between income and expense, and where the most oppressing observations are made concerning the increased cost of living and the growing difficulty in making both ends meet. Upon the flaming altar where the pots are boiling, youth and freedom from care, beauty and light-heartedness are being sacrificed. In the old cook whose eyes are dim and whose back is bent with toil, no one would recognize the blushing bride of yore, beautiful, merry and modestly coquettish in the finery of her bridal garb. — To the ancients the hearth was sacred; beside the hearth they erected their lares and household-gods. Let us also hold the hearth sacred, where the conscientious German housewife slowly sacrifices her life, to keep the home comfortable, the table well supplied, and the family healthy.""

"Inside the camp the we-form is singular."

"Being a stranger is hard, but being a stranger when you're so impossibly close is unbearable."

"Boredom is fear's patience. Fear doesn't want to exaggerate."

"Hunger is not a bunker or a bed frame, otherwise it could be measured. Hunger is not an object."

"Half starved humans are really neither masculine nor feminine but genderless, like objects."

"Hunger devours nearly all the artistry."

"Riding somewhere was always a happy thing. First of all: as long as you're moving, you haven't arrived. As long as you haven't arrived, you don't have to work. Riding in truck gives you time to recover. Second: when you ride, you come to some place that couldn't care less about you. you can't be yelled at or beaten by a tree. Under a tree, yes but the tree can't help that."

"I don't know if I can't sleep because I am trying to recall the objects, or whether I struggle to recall them because I can't sleep."

"There (Kaschau) the mountains stare down through our heads until we die."

"The time for eating otrach orach is over. But not the hunger, which is always greater than we are."

"No novels, since you just read them once and never again."

"You can't rearrange freshly fallen snow, you can't fix snow so it looks untouched. You can rework earth, and sand and even grass if you try hard enough. Water takes care of itself, because it swallows everything and flows back together once it's done swallowing. And air is always in place because you can't see it. Everything but snow would have kept quiet."

"A lot of people think packing a suitcase is something you learn through practice, like singing or praying."

"How can you face the world if all you can say about yourself is that you're hungry. If you can't think of anything else."

"You can think all kinds of things. But you can't know for sure."

"The war was still on in January 1945. In their dismay at my being shipped off in the dead of winter to who knows where in Russia, everyone wanted to give me something that might be of use, even if it couldn't be help. Because nothing in the world could possible help."

"I was my own thief, the words came out of nowhere and caught me."

"You go out for a walk and the world opens up for you. And before you’ve even stretched your legs properly, it closes shut. For here to there it’s all just the farty sputter of lantern. And they call that having lived. It’s not worth the bother of putting on your shoes."

"The real secret is why love starts out with claws like a cat and then fades with time like a half-eaten mouse."

"The world is not a costume ball,"

"Perhaps we had to stand so long as to stop the time in motion. Our bones became heavy as iron. When the flesh on your body disappears,your bones become a burden, and the ground pulls you down."

"There’s an unspoken law that you should never start to cry if you have too many reasons to do so."

"I simply wanted to go to a place that didn't know who I was."

"I have packed myself into silence so deeply and for so long that I can never unpack myself using words. When I speak, I only pack myself a little differently."

"Welt, Welt, Schwester Welt"

"If you don't have the right things, you improvise. the wrong things become necessary. Then the necessary things turn out to be the only right things, simply because they're what you have."

"While Christianity committed its monstrous atrocities, Buddhism, which did not create an organized church in the manner of the occident in India, nor did it create a central authority to decide on the true faith, was much more tolerant."

"Die Geheimnisse der Welt ertrage ich gut; nicht die Erklärungen dafür."

"Freie Presse: jeder darf lesen, was gedruckt wird."

"Aufklärung ist Ärgernis, wer die Welt erhellt, macht ihren Dreck deutlicher."

"Ich will lieber mit den meisten irren als auf meine Weise. So dachte Augustinus. Ich denke umgekehrt."

"Denken überzeugt Denkende; darum überzeugt Denken selten."

"Meine Skepsis bewahrt mich davor, Fanatiker zu werden wovor noch kein Glaube geschützt hat."

"Am wenigsten widerstehen kann ich dem Zweifel. Ich bezweifle alles, selbst meinen Zweifel. Ich glaube wenig und auch das nicht ganz. Skepsis ist für mich keine der «schönen Künste », sondern Teil meiner Existenz."

"Vieles bewundere ich zwischen Himmel und Erde; doch nichts bewundere ich weniger als die Wunder der Religionen."

"A work of art should express only that which elevates the soul and pleases it in a noble manner. The feeling of the artist should not overstep these limits; it is wrong to venture beyond."

"Ein schwacher Feind in der Festung ist fürchterlicher als der stärkste von außen."

"All you have to do is anesthetize the masses by telling them they’re an elite, that they’ve got a mission, that they’re making history, that they’re fulfilling their destiny and fighting for a better world — and they swallow it like lambs — even when a guttersnipe says it."

"Creativity is not limited to people practising one of the traditional forms of art, and even in the case of artists, creativity is not confined to the exercise of their art. Each one of us has a creative potential, which is hidden by competitiveness and success-aggression. To recognize, explore and develop this potential is the task of the School. Creation – whether it be a painting, sculpture, symphony or novel – involves not merely talent, intuition, powers of imagination and application, but also the ability to shape material that could be expanded to other socially relevant spheres."

"Sie muss also zu weit gehen, um herauszufinden, wie weit sie gehen darf."