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Christa Wolf QUOTES

Christa Wolf QUOTES

1 " I've known one thing for a long time: there's a role in the big machine even for someone who makes fun of it. "

― Christa Wolf , Medea

2 " Coldness in everything. It comes from a long way off; it gets into everything. One must get out of the way before it reaches the core. If it does that, one won't feel even the coldness any more. Do you see what I mean? "

― Christa Wolf , The Quest for Christa T.

3 " A possession considered of little value up to now suddenly becomes precious to a person if another person desires it, don't you think? "

― Christa Wolf , Medea

4 " The real question is: How sturdy and solid is the floor our civilization stands on? How many lives with no prospects, shattered and senseless, can it bear the weight of before it cracks somewhere or other, splits at the joints? "

― Christa Wolf , City of Angels or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud

5 " Night thoughts have a different color than day thoughts, a different slant, more than anything else they know all the secret paths and chinks in the armor they can take advantage of to force their way into consciousness. "

― Christa Wolf , City of Angels or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud

6 " Now writing is just working your way toward the border that the innermost secret draws around itself, and to cross that line would mean self-destruction. But writing is also an attempt to respect the borderline only for the truly innermost secret, and bit by bit to free the taboos around that core, difficult to admit as they are, from their prison of unspeakability. Not self-destruction but self-redemption. Not being afraid of unavoidable suffering. "

― Christa Wolf , City of Angels or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud

7 " Every system of power in the world has a vested interest in weakening the individuality of its subjects and tries to weaken or it possible completely extinguish it. "

― Christa Wolf , City of Angels or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud

8 " The word 'catastrophe' is not permitted as long as there is danger of catastrophe turning to doom. "

― Christa Wolf , Accident: A Day's News

9 " Se di me non sopravvivesse altro che l'odio. Se l'odio germogliare dalla mia fossa, un albero d'odio, esso sussurrerebbe: Achille la bestia. Se lo abbattessero, crescerebbe di nuovo. Se lo soffocassero, ogni filo d'erba farebbe suo quel messaggio: Achille la bestia, Achille la bestia. E ogni cantore che osasse cantare la gloria di Achille, morirebbe immediatamente tra i tormenti. Un abisso di disprezzo e di oblio tra le generazioni future e la bestia. Questo, Apollo, concedimi, se esisti. Non sarei vissuta invano. "

― Christa Wolf , Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays

10 " Era possibile, dunque, una cosa simile: voglia omicida e voglia d'amore in un solo uomo? Poteva essere tollerato ciò, tra esseri umani? "

― Christa Wolf

11 " Aquí fue. Ahí estaba. Esos leones de piedra, sin cabeza ahora, la miraron. Esa fortaleza, un día inexpugnable, ahora un montón de piedras, fue lo último que vio. Un enemigo hace tiempo olvidado y los siglos, sol, lluvia y viento, la arrasaron. Inalterado el cielo, un bloque azul intenso, alto, dilatado. Cerca las murallas ciclópeamente ensambladas, hoy como ayer, que marcan su dirección al caminar: hacia la puerta, bajo la cual no mana la sangre. Hacia lo tenebroso. Hacia el matadero. Y sola.
Con mi relato voy hacia la muerte. "

― Christa Wolf

12 " Besides, my confidence that every person can be cured of his or her false beliefs through evidence has meanwhile significantly diminished. Oh, Mr. Brecht, I often think, people can really see an apple fall to the ground an simultaneously believe it when someone claims: It isn't falling. And there it is still the matter of more obvious natural laws! "

― Christa Wolf , Ein Tag im Jahr

13 " I ask myself what gives a person, what gave that woman, the right to confront us with decisions that we are not equal to making, decisions that tear us apart and leave us feeling inferior, incompetent, guilty. "

― Christa Wolf , Medea

14 " This compulsion to undertand seems to me like a stigma that I cannot get rid of and that isolates me from other people. Medea knew about such things. "

― Christa Wolf

15 " Circe:
Do you know what they're looking for, Medea? she asked me. They're looking for a woman who'll tell them that they're not guilty of anything; that the gods, whom they worship by chance, compel them in their undertakings. That the track of blood they leave behind is proper to their male nature as the gods have determined it. "

― Christa Wolf , Medea

16 " ...this is a two-fold country, and, what's more, everyone in it is two-fold, one part possibility and the other its refutal "

― Christa Wolf , The Quest for Christa T.

17 " Es ist so eingerichtet, daß nicht nur die, die Unrecht erdulden müssen, auch die, die Unrecht tun, ihres Lebens nicht froh werden. Überhaupt frage ich mich, ob die Lust, andere Leben zu zerstören, nicht daher kommt, daß man am eigenen Leben so wenig Lust und Freude hat. "

― Christa Wolf , Medea

18 " Schwer, langsam, aber endgültig habe ich mich von dem Glauben gelöst, dass unsere menschlichen Geschicke an den Gang der Gestirne geknüpft sind. Daß dort Seelen wohnen, ähnlich den unseren, die unser Dasein betrifft, und sei es, indem sie die Fäden, die es halten, mißgünstig verwirren. "

― Christa Wolf , Medea

19 " Ich lernte viel an diesem Fall. Ich lernte, daß keine Lüge zu plump ist, als daß die Leute sie nicht glauben würden, wenn sie ihrem geheimen Wunsch, sie zu glauben, entgegenkommt. "

― Christa Wolf , Medea

20 " Ich habe nicht gewußt, was ein Mensch erträgt. Nun sitze ich da und muß mir sagen, auf dieser Fähigkeit, Unerträgliches zu ertragen und weiterzuleben, weiter zu tun, was zu tun man gewöhnt ist, auf dieser unheimlichen Fähigkeit beruht der Bestand des Menschengeschlechts. "

― Christa Wolf , Medea