One cannot start a new life, you can only continue the old one.

- Imre Kertész

I am sick of atrocities, though these are now the natural order of our world. And I would still like to act!

- Imre Kertész

Of course, living is another way of killing oneself: its drawback is that it takes so horribly long.

- Imre Kertész

There's just one revolution that I can take seriously, and that's a police revolution.

- Imre Kertész

I look on my life as raw material for my novels: that's just the way I am, and it frees me from any inhibitions.

- Imre Kertész

I refuse to adapt or integrate myself.

- Imre Kertész

Talking is not enough; words don't clarify anything. I'll have to hit upon something, but what?

- Imre Kertész

Nonexistence. The society of the nonexistent. In the street yesterday a nonexistent person trod on my foot with his nonexistent foot.

- Imre Kertész

I tried to depict the human face of this history, I wanted to write a book that people would actually want to read.

- Imre Kertész