Jonathan Littell > Quotes

“I have remained someone who believes that the only things indispensable to human life are air, food, drink and excretion, and the search for truth. The rest is optional.”
― Jonathan Littell, The Kindly Ones

“If you were born in a country or at a time not only when nobody comes to kill your wife and your children, but also nobody comes to ask you to kill the wives and children of others, then render thanks to God and go in peace. But always keep this thought in mind: you might be luckier than I, but you’re not a better person.”
― Jonathan Littell, The Kindly Ones

“If you ever managed to make me cry, my tears would sear your face.”
― Jonathan Littell, The Kindly Ones

“I was finally beginning to perceive that no matter how many dead people I might see, or people at the instant of their death, I would never manage to grasp death, that very moment, precisely in itself. It was one thing or the other: either you are dead, and then in any case there's nothing else to understand, or else you are not yet dead, and in that case, even with the rifle at the back of your head or the rope around your neck, death remains incomprehensible, a pure abstraction, this absurd idea that I, the only living person in the world, could disappear. Dying, we may already be dead, but we never die, that moment never comes, or rather it never stops coming, there it is, it's coming, and then it's still coming, and then it's already over, without ever having come.”
― Jonathan Littell, The Kindly Ones

“So what's the most atrocious thing you've seen?" He waved his hand: "Man, of course!”
― Jonathan Littell, The Kindly Ones

“Please, mein Herr, shoot the children cleanly.”
― Jonathan Littell, The Kindly Ones

“A necessidade, já os gregos o sabiam, é uma deusa não só cega mas também cruel.”
― Jonathan Littell, The Kindly Ones