Heinrich Boll

Germany
21 Dec 1917 // 16 Jul 1985
Write [Nobel 1972]

Quotes

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No one will ever know how many novels, poems, analyses, confessions, sufferings and joys have been piled up on this continent called Love, without it ever having turned out to be totally investigated.
Politicians, ideologists, theologians and philosophers try time and again to provide solutions with nothing remaining: prefab solved problems.
It's true and it's easily said that language is material, and something does materialize as one writes.
I long for the time of no more departures. It has something to do with age, probably.
Humor is really one of the hardest things to define, very hard. And it's very ambiguous. You have it, or you don't.
A family without a black sheep is not a typical family.
Many writers are radical. I am not, because of my age and because of my terrible fear of demagogy.
An artist is like a woman who can do nothing but love, and who succumbs to every stray male jackass.

The Clown
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'.

The Clown
There are some strange unrecognized forms of prostitution with which prostitution itself is an honest trade: at least you get something for your money.
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays