I do not want to have the feeling of writing “for eternity,” so to speak.

About Elfriede Jelinek

Elfriede Jelinekis an Austrian playwright and novelist. She is one of the most decorated authors to write in German and was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature for her “musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that, with extraordinary linguistic zeal, reveal the absurdity of society’s cliches and their subjugating power”.

More about the author

More quotes from Elfriede Jelinek

I do not want to have the feeling of writing “for eternity,” so to speak.

Elfriede Jelinek

Austrian writer

My training in music and composition then led me to a kind of musical language process in which, for example, the sound of the words I play with has to expose their true meaning against their will so to speak.

Elfriede Jelinek

Austrian writer

My plays are made up of long monologues, which is similar to prose working with the language.

Elfriede Jelinek

Austrian writer

Literature that keeps employing new linguistic and formal modes of expression to draft a panorama of society as a whole while at the same time exposing it, tearing the masks from its face – for me that would be deserving of an award.

Elfriede Jelinek

Austrian writer

I cannot stand public attention, I just can’t. Of course, if I may I might write something instead.

Elfriede Jelinek

Austrian writer

As is said about most writers: on the one hand all I ever did from when I was a child was read, and I was a loner, which was furthered by my parents and my upbringing.

Elfriede Jelinek

Austrian writer

I do not fight against men, but against the system that is sexist.

Elfriede Jelinek

Austrian writer

It could draw from a greater reservoir of freedom. The irony could develop an even greater ease.

Elfriede Jelinek

Austrian writer

The government has once again made the right socially acceptable.

Elfriede Jelinek

Austrian writer

I would gladly do it but I am suffering from social phobia. I cannot manage being in a crowd of people.

Elfriede Jelinek

Austrian writer

The problem is that it is difficult to translate.

Elfriede Jelinek

Austrian writer

I have the feeling it will influence my future writing to the extent that without any material worries I could develop a greater ease, even lightheartedness, in my writing.

Elfriede Jelinek

Austrian writer

I think isolation is one of the greatest problems, an ever-growing obstacle to political solidarity.

Elfriede Jelinek

Austrian writer

Eroding solidarity paradoxically makes a society more susceptible to the construction of substitute collectives and fascisms of all kinds.

Elfriede Jelinek

Austrian writer