Elias Canetti
Elias Canetti
Elias Canettiwas a German language author, born in Bulgaria, and later a British citizen. He was a modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist and non-fiction writer. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981, "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power"...
NationalitySwiss
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 July 1905
CountrySwitzerland
Elias Canetti quotes about
atheist grief fate
There can be no Creator, simply because his grief at the fate of his creation would be inconceivable and unendurable.
thinking speaks-out enemy
It is always the enemy who started it, even if he was not the first to speak out, he was certainly planning it; and if he was not actually planning it, he was thinking of it; and, if he was not thinking of it, he would have thought of it.
want smashing whole
I want to keep smashing myself until I am whole.
fear pessimism boring
Pessimists are not boring. Pessimists are right. Pessimists are superfluous.
philosophical despair may
Everything one records contains a grain of hope, no matter how deeply it may come from despair.
hate self people
People love as self-recognition what they hate as an accusation.
creativity ideas what-matters
It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.
stars constellations
A head full of stars, just not in constellation yet.
men opposites feelings
It is only in a crowd that man can become free of this fear of being touched. That is the only situation in which the fear changes into its opposite… The reversal of fear of being touched belongs to the nature of crowds. The feeling of relief is most striking where the density of the crowd is greatest
scratches statistics
He would like to start from scratch. Where is scratch?
book reading desert
In five minutes the earth would be a desert, and you cling to books.
order hands philosopher
The profoundest thoughts of the philosophers have something trickle about them. A lot disappears in order for something to suddenly appear in the palm of the hand.
might goodness capability
As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.
death guilty obsessed
He who is obsessed by death is made guilty by it.