Daniel Kehlmann Quotes

#1. And make no mistake, Julie. We are having a relationship.

Maya Banks

#2. German can take a lot more pathos than English can. When you say "pathetic" in English it's a disparaging term, but when you say "pathetisch" in German it's just a description, not necessarily negative. That says a lot already.

Daniel Kehlmann

#3. For a while I never show anybody what I'm writing, and during that time I need the feeling that publishing is only an option. I might publish this, I might not. I think if I had to publish it, I might panic.

Daniel Kehlmann

#4. English has a better way with colloquialisms. It has colloquialisms that are colorful and expressive but not too heavy or distracting. In German, if you use colloquialisms, it quickly descends into some kind of dialect literature.

Daniel Kehlmann

#5. If you want to fight the evil you see in finance and industry, get to work reading the corporate filings, see if there has been fraud, and where you find it, report it to the SEC or write about it or blog about it.

Ben Stein

#6. together we could make something worthwhile of our lives'.23

Kitty Ferguson

#7. No one spoke more about hell than Jesus did, and the hell He came to save men from was not only a hell on earth ... it was something to come.

Billy Graham

#8. It was both odd and unjust, a real example of pitiful arbitrariness of existance, that you were born into a particular time & held prisoner there whether you wanted it or not. It gave you an indecent advantage over the past and made you a clown vis-a-vis the future.

Daniel Kehlmann

#9. Nobody, said Humboldt, had a destiny. One simply decided to feign one until one came to believe in it oneself. But so many things didn't fit in with it, one had to really force oneself.

Daniel Kehlmann

#10. The idea of evil is always subject to denial as a coping mechanism.

John Bradshaw

#11. Humans have voids, and you need things to fill voids ... I didn't have a dad to fill that male model void, so when I heard Eminem or freaking seen Dave Chapelle, that's what I gravitated to.

Tyler, The Creator

#12. I think I can work anywhere, but you don't get the same kind of inspiration everywhere. New York theater has become a big inspiration for me. I only started writing for the stage myself because I like to see the good, mostly off-Broadway plays in New York.

Daniel Kehlmann

#13. A neglect of one's sentimental education early in life could bear the most unfortunate fruit.

Daniel Kehlmann

#14. I'm trying to exploit the bestseller, in a way, but not in the sense of repeating the formula. It's just that the bestseller did so well economically that now I'm freer to do what I want to do, or to try out what I want to try out.

Daniel Kehlmann

#15. I wanted to write a book that would leave open many riddles and mysteries, even to me. Of course in some cases I do know the answers, but in many others I don't know and don't want to know.

Daniel Kehlmann

#16. Exactly as we might ask God, and do ask God, to change our fate. The difference is that in the story the writer actually replies and in the end even changes his mind.

Daniel Kehlmann

#17. How do you scare some sense into a child who doesn't fear death?

Todd Burpo

#18. You say fate is almost indispensable to literature - I think it's completely indispensable, at least in a novel, because a novel always has a plot. Even if nothing happens, even if someone just spends a day walking around Dublin, or whatever, there's still something going on.

Daniel Kehlmann

#19. Also, whenever you have direct speech, and I don't quite know why, but it always gets better in English. Dialogue, the flow of dialogue, English just has a better way with it.

Daniel Kehlmann

#20. I think that's just what happens when you write a big bestseller. After that you need to find out: What's the best way to go on? And the worst thing you could do would be to try to repeat the formula. That would be suffocating.

Daniel Kehlmann

#21. When I look at life I try to be as agnostic and unmetaphysical as possible. So I have to admit that, most probably, we do not have a fate. But I think that's something that draws us to novels - that the characters always have a fate. Even if it's a terrible fate, at least they have one.

Daniel Kehlmann

#22. When I write a book I'm always questioning the project as a whole. I always feel I might have to just throw it away and forget about it, and I've done that with novels I've started and worked on for a long time. It's an option I need in order to write freely.

Daniel Kehlmann

#23. English is much drier. You can get away with a lot less. Pathos, lyricism, these are things you have to tone down if you want the English version of the book to work.

Daniel Kehlmann

#24. When you translate the American writers who are best with dialogue into German - someone like Elmore Leonard, or Tom Wolfe, who's also quite good with dialogue. It's very hard to translate them well.

Daniel Kehlmann

#25. You are the only one I can trust about this, Ash said. Which was maybe just another version of what Cathy Kiplinger had said to Jules: you are weak.

Meg Wolitzer

#26. To have true integrity, poise, and courage is to be attuned to the silent and invisible nature within you.

John O'Donohue

#27. It's also one of these strange points where metaphysics converges with economy. Because really what the experts are doing is creating value by banishing doubt. All great dead painters basically have this one person, this expert who has the metaphysical power to grant a seal of authenticity.

Daniel Kehlmann

#28. Colonialists stole not only the lands of African people and renamed them. They stole also their knowledge, so that they would know nothing about themselves

Motsoko Pheko

#29. It's precisely the sense that we're different that makes us so banal.

Daniel Kehlmann

#30. Whenever things were frightening, it was a good idea to measure them.

Daniel Kehlmann

#31. Do not let others decide how much you blow your decide where you want to raise

Alejandro Barrenechea

#32. [Reading is like] the sex act - done privately, and often in bed.

Daniel J. Boorstin

#33. We think in terms of fate even if we don't believe in it. Even something as trivial as missing the bus - we think: Well, it might be good for something. We always have that thought, no matter how critical we try to be. The idea that everything is always total chance - we're not made for that.

Daniel Kehlmann

#34. That was the moment when he grasped that nobody wanted to use their minds. People wanted peace. They wanted to eat and sleep and have other people be nice to them. What they didn't want to do was think.

Daniel Kehlmann

#35. I once got a little camera to use for details of architecture and so forth but the photo was always so different from the perspective the eye gives, I gave it up.

Edward Hopper

#36. People who have experienced nothing love to tell stories while people who have experienced a great deal suddenly have no stories to tell at all.

Daniel Kehlmann

#37. Despite popular belief, hitting someone with a closed fist actually hurts the hitter almost as much as the hittee.

Ally Carter