Top 57 Kertesz Quotes
#1. I came to feel that, in addition to Imre Kertesz, Hungary has produced at least three contemporary novelists who deserve the Nobel: Peter Nadas, Peter Esterhazy and Laszlo Krasznahorkai.
Garth Risk Hallberg
#2. Dr. Kertesz mentioned to me a case known to him of a farmer who had developed prosopagnosia and in consequence could no longer distinguish (the faces of) his cows, and of another such patient, an attendant in a Natural History Museum, who mistook his own reflection for the diorama of an ape
Oliver Sacks
#3. One cannot start a new life, you can only continue the old one.
Imre Kertesz
#4. The world of fiction is a sovereign world that comes to life in the author's head and follows the rules of art, of literature. And that is the major difference that is reflected in the form of the work, in its language and its plot. An author invents every aspect of a fiction, every detail.
Imre Kertesz
#5. Of course a picture can lie, but only if you are not honest with yourself ...
Andre Kertesz
#6. I can see the young man on dizzily autumn mornings, the fog of which he inhaled just like the rapidly evaporating freedom.
Imre Kertesz
#7. I would like to live a little bit longer in this beautiful concentration camp.
Imre Kertesz
#8. I have not changed my opinion that the Holocaust is a trauma of European civilization.
Imre Kertesz
#10. I just walk around, observing the subject from various angles until the picture elements arrange themselves into a composition that pleases my eye.
Andre Kertesz
#11. The camera is my tool. Through it I give a reason to everything around me.
Andre Kertesz
#12. The photographer's art is a continuous discovery which requires patience and time.
Andre Kertesz
#13. A good autobiography is like a document: a mirror of the age on which people can 'depend.' In a novel, by contrast, it's not the facts that matter, but precisely what you add to the facts.
Imre Kertesz
#14. People in motion are wonderful to photograph. It means catching the right moment ... when one thing changes into something else.
Andre Kertesz
#15. The West in general should stand up more for its own values. It is not always worthwhile to compromise.
Imre Kertesz
#16. Everything is a subject. Every subject has a rhythm. To feel it is the raison detre. The photograph is a fixed moment of such a raison detre, which lives on in itself.
Andre Kertesz
#17. I do what I feel, that's all. I am an ordinary photographer working for his own pleasure. That's all I've ever done.
Andre Kertesz
#18. I am sick of atrocities, though these are now the natural order of our world. And I would still like to act!
Imre Kertesz
#19. Kurti had believed in politics, and politics had deceived him, the way politics deceives everyone.
Imre Kertesz
#20. I am an amateur and I intend to stay that way for the rest of my life.
Andre Kertesz
#21. No" - I could never be another person's father, fate, god,
"No" - it should never happen to another child, what happened to me; my childhood. (Auschwitz).
Imre Kertesz
#22. There's just one revolution that I can take seriously, and that's a police revolution.
Imre Kertesz
#23. I read somewhere; while God still existed one sustained a dialogue with God, and now that He no longer exists one has to sustain a dialogue with other people, I guess, or, better still, with oneself, that is to say, one talks or mumbles to oneself.
Imre Kertesz
#24. In a democracy, you have to find a market niche, make sure a novel is 'interesting' and 'spectacular.' That may be the toughest censorship of all.
Imre Kertesz
#25. What I discovered in Auschwitz is the human condition, the end point of a great adventure, where the European traveler arrived after his two-thousand-year-old moral and cultural history.
Imre Kertesz
#26. I was interned in Auschwitz for one year. I didn't bring back anything, except for a few jokes, and that filled me with shame. Then again, I didn't know what to do with this fresh experience. For this experience was no literary awakening, no occasion for professional or artistic introspection.
Imre Kertesz
#27. When we write about Auschwitz, we must know that Auschwitz, in a certain sense at least, suspended literature. One can only write a black novel about Auschwitz or - you should excuse the expression - a cheap serial, which begins in Auschwitz and is still not over.
Imre Kertesz
#28. Man, when reduced to nothing, or in other words a survivor, is not tragic but comic, because he has no fate.
Imre Kertesz
#29. The moment always dictates in my work. What I feel, I do. This is the most important thing for me. Everybody can look, but they don't necessarily see. I never calculate or consider; I see a situation and I know that it's right, even if I have to go back to get the proper lighting.
Andre Kertesz
#30. The most valuable things in a life are a man's memories. And they are priceless.
Andre Kertesz
#31. I can't talk about my style. It us kind of difficult for me. I don't like styles. I only like taking photos and expressing myself through them.
Andre Kertesz
#32. You just sit there and tolerate it, the same way everything in this country is tolerated. Every deception, every lie, every bullet in the brains. Just as you are already tolerating bullets in the brains that will be implemented only after the bullet is put in your brains.
Imre Kertesz
#33. If there is such a thing as freedom, then there is no fate.
Imre Kertesz
#34. Talking is not enough; words don't clarify anything. I'll have to hit upon something, but what?
Imre Kertesz
#35. I tried to depict the human face of this history, I wanted to write a book that people would actually want to read.
Imre Kertesz
#36. It was not very likely, of course, but then all kinds of things are possible, after all.
Imre Kertesz
#37. Of course, living is another way of killing oneself: its drawback is that it takes so horribly long.
Imre Kertesz
#38. I am not a surrealist. I am only a realist. All this group - surrealists - use my name. No, no, I am realist.
Andre Kertesz
#39. I do not document anything, I give an interpretation.
Andre Kertesz
#40. Technique isn't important. Technique is in the blood. Events and mood are more important than good light and the happening is what is important
Andre Kertesz
#41. I came from two harsh dictatorships, Nazi and Stalinist. I never thought of becoming a writer as such, yet in a lucid moment, I recognised what I had to do.
Imre Kertesz
#42. Nonexistence. The society of the nonexistent. In the street yesterday a nonexistent person trod on my foot with his nonexistent foot.
Imre Kertesz
#43. Modern life is organised so that you benefit at the expense of the other, and the most extreme example of that is a camp.
Imre Kertesz
#44. I can do something with almost anything I see. Everything is still interesting to me.
Andre Kertesz
#45. Have confidence in the inventions and transformations of chance.
Andre Kertesz
#47. You do not have to imagine things; reality gives you all you need.
Andre Kertesz
#48. Seeing is not enough; you have to feel what you photograph
Andre Kertesz
#49. I still regard myself as an amateur today and I hope that's what I'll stay until the end of my life. Because I'm forever a beginner who discovers the world again and again.
Andre Kertesz
#50. My talent lies in the fact that I cannot touch a camera without expressing myself.
Andre Kertesz
#51. 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 Kertesz
#53. It is often said of me - some intend it as a compliment, others as a complaint - that I write about a single subject: the Holocaust. I have no quarrel with that. Why shouldn't I accept, with certain qualifications, the place assigned to me on the shelves of libraries?
Imre Kertesz
#54. A book is either autobiography or a novel.
Imre Kertesz
#55. I think a man turns into a writer by editing his own texts.
Imre Kertesz
#56. Writers sometimes cast themselves into the most profound depths of despair in order to master it and move on.
A person's true means of expression is his life. Living the shame of life and maintaining silence, that was the greatest accomplishment of all.
Imre Kertesz
#57. Writing changed my life. It has an existential dimension, and that's the same for every writer. Every artist has a moment of awakening, of happening upon an idea that grabs hold of you, regardless of whether you are a painter or a writer.
Imre Kertesz
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