Satantango Quotes

“Get it into your thick head that jokes are just like life. Things that begin badly, end badly. Everything's fine in the middle, it's the end you need to worry about.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“Irimiás: God is not made manifest in language, you dope. He's not manifest in anything. He doesn't exist... God was a mistake. I've long understood there is zero difference between me and a bug, or a bug and a river, or a river and a voice shouting above it. There's no sense or meaning in anything. It's nothing but a network of dependency under enormous fluctuating pressures. It's only our imaginations, not our senses, that continually confront us with failure and the false belief that we can raise ourselves by our own bootstraps from the miserable pulp of delay. There's no escaping that, stupid.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“He gazed sadly at the threatening sky, at the burned-out remnants of a locust-plagued summer, and suddenly saw on the twig of an acacia, as in a vision, the progress of spring, summer, fall and winter, as if the whole of time were a frivolous interlude in the much greater spaces of eternity, a brilliant conjuring trick to produce something apparently orderly out of chaos, to establish a vantage point from which chance might begin to look like necessity . . . and he saw himself nailed to the cross of his own cradle and coffin, painfully trying to tear his body away, only, eventually, to deliver himself — utterly naked, without identifying mark, stripped down to essentials — into the care of the people whose duty it was to wash the corpses, people obeying an order snapped out in the dry air against a background loud with torturers and flayers of skin, where he was obliged to regard the human condition without a trace of pity, without a single possibility of any way back to life, because by then he would know for certain that all his life he had been playing with cheaters who had marked the cards and who would, in the end, strip him even of his last means of defense, of that hope of someday finding his way back home.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“What is behind me still remains ahead of me.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“However apparently insignificant the event, whether it be the ring of tobacco ash surrounding the table, the direction from which the wild geese first appeared, or a series of seemingly meaningless human movements, he couldn’t afford to take his eyes off it and must note it all down, since only by doing so could he hope not to vanish one day and fall a silent captive to the infernal arrangement whereby the world decomposes but is at the same time constantly in the process of self-construction.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“For minutes on end he could not tell whether he was really hearing howls of pain, or whether it was simply that his years of long, exhausting work had rendered him incapable of distinguishing between the general noise and ancient prehistoric screams that were somehow preserved in time ('the evidence of suffering does not disappear without a trace,' he hopefully remarked) and now were being raised by the rain, like dust.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“Irimiás scrapes the mud off his lead-heavy shoes, clears his throat, cautiously opens the door, and the rain begins again, while to the east, swift as memory, the sky brightens, scarlet and pale blue and leans against the undulating horizon, to be followed by the sun, like a beggar daily panting up to his spot on the temple steps, full of heartbreak and misery, ready to establish the world of shadows, to separate the trees one from the other, to raise, out of the freezing, confusing homogeneity of night in which they seem to have been trapped like flies in a web, a clearly defined earth and sky with distinct animals and men, the darkness still in flight at the edge of things, somewhere on the far side on the western horizon, where its countless terrors vanish one by one like a desperate, confused, defeated army.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“Bough of a tree to the rain . . .” he turns the phrase over in his mouth as if it were fine wine, trying to guess its vintage, realizing somewhat indifferently that it is beyond him.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“In the tense silence the continual buzzing of the horseflies was the only audible sound, that and the constant rain beating down in the distance, and, uniting the two, the ever more frequent scritch-scratch of the bent acacia trees outside, and the strange nightshift work of the bugs in the table legs and in various parts of the counter whose irregular pulse measured out the small parcels of time, apportioning the narrow space into which a word, a sentence or a movement might perfectly fit. The entire end-of-October night was beating with a single pulse, its own strange rhythm sounding through trees and rain and mud in a manner beyond words or vision: a vision present in the low light, in the slow passage of darkness, in the blurred shadows, in the working of tired muscles; in the silence, in its human subjects, in the undulating surface of the metaled road; in the hair moving to a different beat than do the dissolving fibers of the body; growth and decay on their divergent paths; all these thousands of echoing rhythms, this confusing clatter of night noises, all parts of an apparently common stream, that is the attempt to forget despair; though behind things other things appear as if by mischief, and once beyond the power of the eye they don't hang together. So with the door left open as if forever, with the lock that will never open. There is a chasm, a crevice.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“The stench of sewers mixed with mud, the smell of the odd crack of lightning, wind tugging at tiles, power lines, empty nests; the stifling heat behind the low ill-fitting windows... impatient, annoyed half-words of lovers embracing... demanding wails of babies, their cries sliding off into the tin-smell of dusk; streets pliable, parks soaked to their roots lying obedient to the rain, bare oaks, half-broken dry flowers, scorched grass all prostrate, humbled by the storm, sacrifices strewn at the executioner's feet.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“ظلت جالسة هناك والدموع تنبع من عينيها وجسدها منهك، صار وزن العالم كله ثقيلًا فوق كتفيها”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“the history of the earth that had seemed so solid, so fixed under and around him, came alive, though the unknown author’s awkward, unpolished style — the book being written now in the present and now in the past tense — confused him, so he couldn’t be sure whether he was reading a work of prophecy regarding the earth’s condition after the demise of humanity or a proper work of geological history based on the planet on which he actually lived.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“Until now she had always believed that it was failure only that was intolerable, but now she understood that victory too was intolerable, because the most shameful element of the desperate struggle was not that she remained on top, but that there was no chance of defeat.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“So, doing nothing, he simply remained on the alert, careful to preserve his failing memory against the decay that consumed everything around him, much as he had done from the moment that he — once the closing of the estate had been announced and he personally had decided to stay behind and survive on what remained until “the decision to reverse the closure should be taken” — had gone up to the mill with the elder Horgos girl to observe the terrible racket of the abandonment of the place, with everyone rushing round and shouting, the trucks in the distance like refugees fleeing the scene, when it seemed to him that the mill’s death-sentence had brought the whole estate to a condition of near collapse, and from that day on he felt too weak to halt by himself the triumphal progress of the wrecking process, however he might try, there being nothing he could do in the face of the power that ruined houses, walls, trees and fields, the birds that dived from their high stations, the beasts that scurried forth, and all human bodies, desires and hopes, knowing he wouldn’t, in any case, have the strength, however he tried, to resist this treacherous assault on humanity; and, knowing this, he understood, just in time, that the best he could do was to use his memory to fend off the sinister, underhanded process of decay, trusting in the fact that since all that mason might build, carpenter might construct, woman might stitch, indeed all that men and women had brought forth with bitter tears was bound to turn to an undifferentiated, runny, underground, mysteriously ordained mush, his memory would remain lively and clear, right until his organs surrendered and “conformed to the contract whereby their business affairs were wound up,” that is to say until his bones and flesh fell prey to the vultures hovering over death and decay.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“The entire end-of-October night was beating with a single pulse, its own strange rhythm sounding through trees and rain and mud in a manner beyond words or vision: a vision present in the low light, in the slow passage of darkness, in the blurred shadows, in the working of tired muscles; in the silence, in its human subjects, in the undulating surface of the metaled road; in the hair moving to a different beat than do the dissolving fibers of the body; growth and decay on their divergent paths; all these thousands of echoing rhythms, this confusing clatter of night noises, all parts of an apparently common stream, that is the attempt to forget despair; though behind things other things appear as if by mischief, and once beyond the power of the eye they no longer hang together. So with the door left open as if forever, with the lock that will never open.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“Se gandi iar la cotet si la porci, intrucat simti ca la fel cum cei care nu banuiesc ca din providenta ce pluteste deasupra zilelor noastre o sa ramana doar lumina de pe cutitul cu care se injunghie porcul, tot asa nici noi nu banuim nimic, si nici n-o sa aflam vreodata ceva despre acest infricosator adio.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“We are born into this sty of a world,” he thought, his mind still pounding, “like pigs rolling in our own muck, with no idea what all that jostling at the teats amounts to, why we’re engaged in this perpetual hoof-to-hoof combat on the path that leads to the trough, or to our beds at dusk.” He buttoned himself up and moved to one side to be directly under the rain. “Go wash my old bones,” he grumbled. “Give them a good wash, since this ancient piece of shit won’t be around much longer.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“he was lost in successive waves of time, coolly aware of the minimal speck of his own being, seeing himself as the defenseless, helpless victim of the earth’s crust, the brittle arc of his life between birth and death caught up in the dumb struggle between surging seas and rising hills, and it was as if he could already feel the gentle tremor beneath the chair supporting his bloated body, a tremor that might be the harbinger of seas about to break in on him, a pointless warning to flee before its all-encompassing power made escape impossible, and he could see himself running, part of a desperate, terrified stampede comprising stags, bears, rabbits, deer, rats, insects and reptiles, dogs and men, just so many futile, meaningless lives in the common, incomprehensible devastation, while above them flapped clouds of birds, dropping in exhaustion, offering the only possible hope.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“Not a bird is stirring to leave its mark on the sky that has hardened to a solid mass that, like a morning mist, hovers above the ground, only a solitary frightened deer rises and sinks in the distance — as if the mud itself were breathing — preparing to flee in the far distance.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“at which point he saw “his own careworn features” and recognized them with a shock like a stab of pain since he felt that what the rain was doing to his face was exactly what time would do. It would wash it away.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“as if the whole of time were a frivolous interlude in the much greater spaces of eternity, a”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“And there was that other time, some years ago, at her father's funeral, when, having understood that death, which was 'the most direct way to heaven and the angels,' was not only the result of God's will, but was something that could be chosen, and she herself was determined to find out how that worked, it was her brother who had enlightened her. She couldn't have possibly worked it out by herself: she needed him to tell her what exactly to do, a solution she might perhaps have stumbled on by herself, which was that 'rat poison would do the trick too.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“(...) he was lost in successive waves of time, coolly aware of the minimal speck of his own being, seeing himself as the defenseless, helpless victim of the earth’s crust, the brittle arc of his life between birth and death caught up in the dumb struggle between surging seas and rising hills, and it was as if he could already feel the gentle tremor beneath the chair supporting his bloated body, a tremor that might be the harbinger of seas about to break in on him, a pointless warning to flee before its all-encompassing power made escape impossible, and he could see himself running, part of a desperate, terrified stampede comprising stags, bears, rabbits, deer, rats, insects and reptiles, dogs and men, just so many futile, meaningless lives in the common, incomprehensible devastation, while above them flapped clouds of birds, dropping in exhaustion, offering the only possible hope.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“Privi cu tristete cerul sinistru, resturile parjolite ale verii invadate de lacuste, si avu dintr-odata revelatia felului in care trece primavara, vara, toamna si iarna peste aceleasi crengi uscate ale salcamilor, simtind cum timpul, un mascarici in sfera nemiscata a eternitatii, ademenind vicioasele linii satanice peste hartoapele haosului si creand inaltimea, trece nebunia drept necesitate... si se vazu pe sine chinuindu-se intr-o ultima crispare pe crucea de lemn a leaganului si a sicriului, pentru ca-n final, despuiat de tot si de toate sa ajunga, in ranjetul unei sentinte ce pocneste uscat si al harnicilor jupuitori de piei, pe mana spalatorilor de morti, unde apoi va trebui sa vada, intr-un mod necrutator, masura lucrurilor umane, fara ca macar o singura poteca sa-l conduca inapoi, pentru ca atunci o sa-i fie clar deja si faptul ca intrase intr-o partida cu jucatori necinstiti, rezultatul fiind decis de mult, in finalul careia i se va fura si ultima arma, speranta ca odata ajunge si el acasa.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“A fost o greseala. Pentru ca adineauri am inteles ca intre mine si o insecta, intre o insecta si un rau, intre un rau si un strigat, care se arcuieste peste acesta, nu este nici o deosebire. Totul functioneaza gol si fara noima sub presiunea dependentei si a unui stravechi balans salbatic, astfel ca numai imaginatia, nicidecum esecul etern al simturilor, ne ispiteste neincetat cu credinta, ca sa putem iesi din viziunile mizeriei.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“Imaginile i se perindau in tacere, iar si iar, prin fata ochilor, intr-o succesiune tot mai rigida, parca tot ce considera omul ca-i important sa fie pastrat ar avea o ordine independenta si indisolubila, iar in timp ce memoria lucreaza sa confere certitudine si existenta prezentul atat de vremelnic, validand firele regulii vii in tesatura libera a evenimentelor , il obliga pe om ca podul peste haul ce-l desparte de propria viata sa nu-l construiasca din libertate, ci din propriile satisfactii spasmodice.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“Isi marturisi ca viata lui fara consistenta, care numara 52 de ani, care alunecase pe langa evenimente, e tot atat de neinsemnata in lupta indarjita a marilor destine, a marilor cariere, pe cat de imperceptibil e fumul unei tigari in in vagonul unui tren aflat in flacari.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“De o parte si de alta a soselei, pe portiunea acoperita cu palcuri mohorate de padure pana la linia orizontului, totul este plin cu noroi, iar pentru ca noaptea care se pogoara dizolva consistenta, absoarbe culoarea, transforma incremenirea in plutire, pietrificand tot ce misca, soseaua pare o nava ce stationeaza, leganandu-se misterios in mijlocul unui ocean de mal, mare cat o lume intreaga.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“Cele doua ceasuri arata, concomitent, doua forme diferite de timp, desi pe ambele destul de inexact. Al nostru intarzie peste masura, iar cel de acolo de afara... nu masoara timpul, ci eternitatea aservirii, iar cu treaba asta avem de-a face cat are de-a face creanga cu ploaia: suntem neputinciosi.”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango

“لا تختفي علائم المعاناة من غير أثر”
― László Krasznahorkai, Satantango