The Artificial Silk Girl Quotes

“If a young woman from money marries an old man because of money and nothing else and makes love to him for hours and has this pious look on her face, she's called a German mother and a decent woman. If a young woman without money sleeps with a man with no money because he has smooth skin and she likes him, she's a whore and a bitch.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“They have courses teaching you foreign languages and ballroom dancing and etiquette and cooking. But there are no classes to learn how to be by yourself in a furnished room with chipped dishes, or how to be alone in general without any words of concern or familiar sounds.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“Yes, there are stars," I lie and I give them to him--there are no stars--but there must be some behind the clouds and they must be shining inside-out tonight. I love stars, but I hardly ever notice them. I guess when you're blind, you realize how much you forget to see.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“Vater unser, mach mir noch mit einem Wunder eine feine Bildung
- das Übrige kann ich ja selbst machen mit Schminke.”
― Irmgard Keun, Das kunstseidene Mädchen

“I hesitate to demonstrate my ignorance, which is never a good idea, by the way. Because you only get oppressed.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“The city isn't good and the city isn't happy and the city is sick," he says--"but you are good and I thank you for that.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“And I think it will be a good thing if I write everything down, because I’m an unusual person. I don’t mean a diary — that’s ridiculous for a trendy girl like me. But I want to write like a movie, because my life is like that and it’s going to become even more so. And I look like Colleen Moore, if she had a perm and her nose were a little more fashionable, like pointing up. And when I read it later on, everything will be like at the movies — I’m looking at myself in pictures.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“That says a lot, if somebody pleases you - love is so much more that I'm thinking, perhaps it doesn't exist at all.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“Father thou art in heaven, please make my inside so good and so fine that he can love me. I'm going to buy him a tie, because that's something I can do. Someone once told me that I have an almost masculine understanding of it. i guess there are situations where having a past is to your advantage. Heavenly Father, perform a miracle and give me an education--I can do the rest myself with make-up.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“And it was then that I knew what it means to be lucky--lucky to have met a person during those three minutes of the day that he's good. Because I have a lot of time on my hands--you can imagine that that adds up. there are 24 hours in a day, and half of that is night. That leaves you with 12. And that's 12 times 60 minutes, that is, 720 minutes minus three minutes of goodness still leaves you with 717 minutes worth of nasty ordinary person.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“But I say: "Tilli, sometimes women too are sensual and want only that one thing." And there's no difference. Because sometimes I only want to wake up with someone in the morning, all messed up from kissing and half dead and without any energy to think, but wonderfully tired and rested at the same time.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“And I know for a fact that those who "always have to tell the truth" are definitely lying (63)”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“There are bars with women wearing shirts with stiff necks and ties and they are terribly proud to be perverts, as if that weren't something nobody can do anything about.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“And sometimes somebody is laughing--and that laugh is stuffing all of yesterday's and today's anger back into the mouth that it's oozing from.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“I so want to give him my notebook--I want to be a real person--he should read my book--I work for him, I cook for him, I'm Doris--Doris isn't just some piece of dirt. I don't want to be innocent, I want to be the real Doris here and not that silly civilized product of the Green Moss's imagination.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“All the people are in a hurry--and sometimes they look pale under those lights, then the girls' dresses look like they're not paid off yet and the men can't really afford the wine--is nobody really happy? Now it's all getting dark. Where is my shiny Berlin?”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“Everything is being torn up and destroyed and if you want to be honest, you have to admit that you can’t figure things out anymore. And particularly an educated man can’t build anything for himself anymore, and everything is uncertain. The whole world is uncertain and life and the future and what we used to believe in and what we believe in now, and work isn’t fun anymore, because you always have a bad conscience because there are so many people who don’t have any. And so a man has nothing but his wife and he’s very dependent on her because he wants to be able to believe in something, and that’s the love for his wife — and then she doesn’t want all that love and that way you’re not worth anything at all anymore. And because you’re nothing but a burden on humanity these days — that’s why you need that special someone so badly to whom you can be a joy. And then all of a sudden you’re no joy anymore. And true elegance is disappearing in this day and age and in times like that, women are the first ones to slide, and men are held by the law and they hold women too — and once all the laws of humanity have disappeared, man has nothing more to hold onto,”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“You can always tell the profession of a girl’s last boyfriend, because they talk the language of his occupation.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“And the real actors look down on those from the drama school and are sure to let them know. They also look down on each other, but that they don’t show too much. In any case, there’s a hell of a lot of looking down on each other, and everyone thinks they’re the only one who’s wonderful. And the janitors are the only ones who act like normal people and greet you when you say hello to them.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“We went to the movies together. It was a movie about girls in uniforms. They were high-class girls, but they had the same problems I have. You love somebody and that brings tears to your eyes and gives you a red nose. You love somebody--it's nothing you can understand. It doesn't matter whether it's a man or a woman or God.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“The city isn’t good and the city isn’t happy and the city is sick,” he says — “but you are good and I thank you for that.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“I don't want to work, but I have buoys of cork in my stomach. They won't let me go down, will they?”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“Then conversation. It’s always about sex. You really get tired of it. Jokes about sex, stories about sexual conquests, lectures on serious science about sex, which is supposed to sound like an expert discussion which is why it tends to get even more disgusting. But you’re not supposed to show your disgust, because if you do, the Scarface will give you this condescending smile: pooh-pooh, I thought you were a woman who’s above that, but women always have a dirty mind.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“And we talked to each other at a restaurant and I was supposed to order wine and I would much rather have had something to eat. But that’s just like them — they don’t mind paying large sums for something to drink, but as soon as they have to pay just a small amount for something to eat they feel taken advantage of, because food is a necessity, but having a drink is superfluous and therefore elegant.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“Then I can sit in the film café from morning till night, all year round. Some day they will discover me as a starved corpse to use as an extra.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“Sometimes there are mirrors that make me look like an old woman. That’s the way it’s going to be thirty years from now.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“The industrialist dropped me already. And it’s all because of politics. Politics poisons human relationships. I spit on it. The emcee was a Jew, the one on the bike was a Jew, the one who was dancing was a Jew.… So he asks me if I’m Jewish too. My God, I’m not — but I’m thinking: if that’s what he likes, I’ll do him the favor — and I say: “Of course — my father just sprained his ankle at the synagogue last week.” So he says, he should have known, with my curly hair. Of course it’s permed, and naturally straight like a match. So he gets all icy; turns out he’s nationalist with a race, and race is an issue — and he got all hostile — it’s all very difficult. So I did exactly the wrong thing. But I didn’t feel like taking it all back. After all, a man should know in advance whether he likes a woman or not. So stupid! At first they pay you all sorts of compliments and are drooling all over you — and then you tell them: I’m a chestnut! — and their chin drops: oh, you’re a chestnut — yuk, I had no idea. And you are exactly the way you were before, but just one word has supposedly changed you.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“Times are horrible. Nobody has any money and there is an immoral spirit in the air — just as you’re getting ready to hit on someone for some cash, they’re already hitting on you!”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“I always listen in on conversations — that always interests me. You never know what you might learn from it.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl

“Well, I’m not that much into ideals. I can’t see the point of it.”
― Irmgard Keun, The Artificial Silk Girl