The Voice Imitator Quotes

“Hotel Waldhaus

We had no luck with the weather and the guests at our table were repellent in every respect. They even spoiled Nietzsche for us. Even after they had had a fatal car accident and had been laid out in the church in Sils, we still hated them.”
― Thomas Bernhard, The Voice Imitator

“Unfulfilled Wish

A woman in Atzbach was murdered by her husband because, in his opinion, she had carried the wrong child with her to safety from their burning house. She had not saved their eight-year old son, for whom the man had special plans, but had saved their daughter, who was not loved by the husband. When the husband was asked, in the District Court in Wels, what plans he had had for his son, who had been completely consumed by the fire, the husband replied that he had intended him to be an anarchist and a mass murderer of dictatorships and thus a destroyer of the state.”
― Thomas Bernhard, The Voice Imitator

“Disappointed Englishman.

Several Englishmen who were inveigled by a mountain guide in eastern Tyrol into climbing the Drei Zinnen with him were so disappointed, after reaching the highest of the three peaks, with what Nature had to offer them on this highest peak that then and there they killed the guide, a family man with three children and, it seems, a deaf wife. When, however, they realized what they had actually done, they threw themselves off the peak, one after the other. After this, a newspaper in Birmingham wrote that Birmingham had lost its most outstanding newspaper publisher, its most extraordinary bank director, and its most able undertaker.”
― Thomas Bernhard, The Voice Imitator

“Moosprugger tévedése

Moosprugger professzor mesélte, hogy a Nyugati pályaudvarról egy olyan kollégát hozott el, akit személyesen nem, csupán levelezés útján ismert. Voltaképpen egy másikat várt, nem azt, aki megérkezett a Nyugati pályaudvarra. Mikor figyelmeztettem Moospruggert, hogy mindig más érkezik, mint akit vártunk, felállt és eltávozott, csak azért, hogy azokat a kapcsolatokat, melyekre élete folyamán szert tett, megszakítsa és felszámolja.”
― Thomas Bernhard, The Voice Imitator

“We have always preferred to be operated on by the assistants of famous surgeons who are also always famous medical professors, and not by those surgeons and professors themselves.”
― Thomas Bernhard, The Voice Imitator

“To our horror, the very neighbor whom we had for decades thought of as the best natured and hardest working and, we always thought, the most contented of all our neighbors has turned out to be a murderer.”
― Thomas Bernhard, The Voice Imitator

“Erdei Ház Hotel

Nem volt szerencsénk semmilyen vonatkozásban, sem az időjárással, sem az asztalunknál ülő ellenszenves vendégekkel. Magát Nietzschét is meggyűlöltették velünk. Még akkor is gyűlöltük őket, miután autójukkal halálos balesetet szenvedtek, és már fel voltak ravatalozva Sils templomában.”
― Thomas Bernhard, The Voice Imitator

“Хотел Валдхаус

Нисмо имали среће са временом, а ни са гостима за нашим столом, који су у сваком погледу били одвратни. Чак су нам и Ничеа огадили. Па и када су смртно страдали у саобраћајној несрећи и већ лежали на одру у цркви у Силсу, ми смо их још увек мрзели.”
― Thomas Bernhard, The Voice Imitator

“Mais, lui, ne voulant pas renier son caractère, avait, avant de se suicider, brûlé l’œuvre de sa vie, la rendant au néant en quelques instants, après avoir consacré des dizaines d’années à la mener à bien, et il n’avait pas voulu la laisser à une postérité qui ne la méritait en aucun cas (Génie).”
― Thomas Bernhard, The Voice Imitator

“Un chef d’État de cette Europe centrale où les chefs d’État peuvent, à bon droit, craindre à chaque instant pour leur vie, avait révélé à son confident un plan mis au point au cours de centaines de nuits d’insomnie, et qui devait permettre au chef de l’État de déserter l’État que, comme tous les autres chefs d’État d’Europe centrale font avec le leur, il avait bien entendu conduit systématiquement à la ruine la plus complète (L'imitateur)”
― Thomas Bernhard, The Voice Imitator

“We had taken him for a Norwegian ship's captain and had come to his table to hear some more about seafaring, not about philosophy, from which, indeed, we had fled north from Central Europe.”
― Thomas Bernhard, The Voice Imitator