The Wall Quotes

“External freedom has probably never existed, but neither have I ever known anyone who knew inner freedom.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“But if time exists only in my head, and I'm the last human being, it will end with my death. The thought cheers me. I may be in a position to murder time. The big net will tear and fall, with its sad contents, into oblivion. I'm owed some gratitude, but no one after my death will know I murdered time. Really these thoughts are quite meaningless. Things happen, and, like millions of people before me, I look for meaning in them, because my vanity will not allow me to admit that the whole meaning of an event lies in the event itself.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“Even now I’m nothing but a thin skin covering a mountain of memories.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“Sometimes my thoughts grow confused, and it is as if the forest has put down roots in me, and is thinking its old, eternal thoughts with my brain.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“I can allow myself to write the truth; all the people for whom I have lied throughout my life are dead.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“I know that I, like every living thing, will have to die some day, but my hands, my feet and my guts still don’t know it, which is why death seems so unreal.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“Ik denk dat de tijd volkomen stilstaat en dat ik me erin beweeg, soms langzaam en soms met razende snelheid. Ik zit aan de tafel en de tijd staat stil. Ik kan hem niet zien, niet ruiken en niet horen maar hij omringt me aan alle kanten. Zijn stilte en zijn onbeweeglijkheid zijn verschrikkelijk. Ik spring op, ren het huis uit en probeer hem te ontvluchten. Ik ga iets doen, de dingen eisen mijn aandacht op en ik vergeet de tijd. En dan, heel plotseling, is hij weer om me heen. Misschien sta ik voor het huis naar de kraaien te kijken en daar is hij weer, immaterieel en stil, en hij houdt ons vast, de wei, de kraaien en mij. Ik zal aan hem moeten wennen, aan zijn onverschilligheid en zijn alomtegenwoordigheid.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“Imagination makes people oversensitive,vulnerable and exposed. Perhaps it's a form of degeneracy. I have never held the shortcomings of the unimaginative against them. Sometimes I've even envied them: they have an easier and more pleasant life than everyone else.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“I often look forward to a time when there won't be anything left to grow attached to. I'm tired of everything being taken away from me. Yet there's no escape, for as long as there's something for me to love in the forest, I shall love it; and if some day there is nothing, I shall stop living.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“Im Grunde sind diese Gedanken ganz ohne Bedeutung. Die Dingen geschehen eben und ich suche, wie Millionen Menschen vor mir, in ihnen einen Sinn, weil meine Eitelkeit nicht gestatten will, zuzugeben, daß der ganze Sinn eines Geschehnisses in ihm selbst liegt. Kein Käfer, den ich achtlos zertrete, wird in diesem, für ihn traurigen Ereignis einen geheimnisvollen Zusammenhang von universeller Bedeutung sehen, Er war in dem Augenblick unter meinem Fuß, als ich niedertrat; Wohlbehagen im Licht, ein kurzer schriller Schmerz und Nichts. Nur wir sind dazu verurteilt, einer Bedeutung nachzujagen, die es nicht geben kann.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“It was better not to think about human beings. The great game of the sun, moon, and stars seemed to be working out, and that hadn't been invented by humans. But it wasn't completed yet, and might bear the seeds of failure within it.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“I could simply forget I was a woman. Sometimes I was a child in search of strawberries, or a young man sawing wood, or, when sitting on the bench holding Pearl on my scrawny lap and watching the setting sun, I was a very old, sexless creature.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“I'd never been capable of simply nipping an anxiety in the bud. I always had to wait until it was ripe and mature and fell from me.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“Well, [the cat] had chosen this free life of her own accord. But had she really? After all, she couldn’t choose. I saw no great difference between her and myself. I could choose, certainly, but only with my mind, and as far as I was concerned that amounted to not being able to choose at all. The cat and I were made of the same stuff, and we were in the same boat, drifting with all living things toward the great dark rapids. As a human being, I alone had the honor of recognizing this, without being able to do anything about it. A dubious gift on the part of nature, if I thought about it.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“I think time stands quite still and we move around in it, sometimes slowly and sometimes at a furious rate.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“Es gibt Stunden, in denen ich mich freue auf eine Zeit, in der es nichts mehr geben wird, woran ich mein Herz hängen könnte. Ich bin müde davon, daß mir doch alles wieder genommen wird. Es gibt keinen Ausweg, denn solange es im Wald ein Geschöpf gibt, das ich lieben könnte, werde ich es tun; und wenn es einmal wirklich nichts mehr gibt, werde ich aufhören zu leben. Wären alle Menschen von meiner Art gewesen, hätte es nie eine Wand gegeben, und der alte Mann müßte nicht versteinert vor seinem Brunnen liegen. Aber ich verstehe, warum die anderen immer in der Übermacht waren. Lieben und für ein anderes Wesen sorgen ist ein sehr mühsames Geschäft und viel schwerer, als zu töten und zu zerstören. Ein Kind aufzuziehen dauert zwanzig Jahre, es zu töten zehn Sekunden.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“Und doch sitzt in mir noch immer eine wahnsinnige Hoffnung. Ich kann nur nachsichtig darüber lächeln. Mit diesem verstockten Eigensinn habe ich als Kind gehofft, nie sterben zu müssen. Ich stelle mir diese Hoffnung als einen blinden Maulwurf vor, der in mir hockt und über seinem Wahn brütet. Da ich ihn nicht aus mir vertreiben kann, muss ich ihn gewähren lassen. ”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“I've suffered from anxieties like these as far back as I can remember, and I will suffer from them as long as any creature is entrusted to me. Sometimes, long before the wall existed, I wished I was dead, so that I could finally cast off my burden. I always kept quiet about this heavy load; a man wouldn't have understood, and the women felt exactly the same way as I did. And so we preferred to chat about clothes, friends and the theater and laugh, keeping our secret, consuming worry in our eyes. Each of us knew about it, and that's why we never discussed it. That was the price we paid for our ability to love.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“Not that I'm afraid of becoming an animal. That wouldn't be too bad, but a human being can never become just an animal; he plunges beyond, into the abyss. I don't want this to happen to me. Recently that's what has made me most afraid, and it is out of that fear I am writing my report. Once I've reached the end I shall hide it well and forget about it. I don't want the strange thing that I might turn into to find it one day.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“And I was forced to do nothing and to wait, a state that I had always particularly disliked. I had waited much too often and much too long for people or events which had never turned up, or which had turned up so late that they had ceased to mean anything to me.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“One day I shall no longer exist, and no one will cut the meadow, the thickets will encroach upon it and later the forest will push as far as the wall and win back the land that man has stolen from it. Sometimes my thoughts grow confused, and it is as if the forest has put down roots in me, and is thinking its old, eternal thoughts with my brain. And the forest doesn't want human beings to come back.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“Our freedom is in a sorry state. In all probability it’s only ever existed on paper. External freedom has probably never existed, but neither have I ever known anyone who knew inner freedom. And I have never found this fact shaming. I can’t see what should be dishonorable about bearing, as all animals do, this burden that is laid upon us; in the end, we die as all animals do. I don’t even know what honor is. It isn’t honorable to be born and to die, it happens to all creatures and has no meaning beyond that.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“Since I’ve been living in the forest I don’t notice myself getting older. There’s nobody there to draw my attention to it, after all. Nobody tells me how I look, and I never give it a thought myself.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“Einmal, es muß im ersten Winter gewesen sein, sah ich einen Fuchs am Bach stehen und trinken. Er war im graubraunen Winterpelz mit dem weißlichen Reif darüber. In der schläfrigen Stille der Schneelandschaft sah er sehr lebendig aus. Ich hätte ihn schießen können, ich trug das Gewehr bei mir, aber ich tat es nicht. Perle mußte sterben, weil einer ihrer Vorfahren eine überzüchtete Angorakatze war. Sie war von Anfang an als Opfer für Füchse, Eulen und Marder bestimmt. Sollte ich dafür den schönen lebendigen Fuchs bestrafen? Perle war ein Unrecht widerfahren, aber dieses Unrecht war auch ihren Opfern, den Forellen, geschehen, sollte ich es an den Fuchs weitergeben? Das einzige Wesen im Wald, das wirklich recht oder unrecht tun kann, bin ich. Und nur ich kann Gnade üben. Manchmal wünsche ich mir, diese Last der Entscheidung liege nicht auf mir. Aber ich bin ein Mensch, und ich kann nur denken und handeln wie ein Mensch. Davon wird mich erst der Tod befreien.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“She loved life so much, and always did everything wrong, because in our world you can’t love life as much as that with impunity.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“The only enemy I had ever encountered in my life so far had been man.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“I am still scrawny, but muscular, and my face is crisscrossed with tiny wrinkles. I’m not ugly, but neither am I attractive, more like a tree than a person, a tough brown branch that needs its whole strength to survive.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“It's only when knowledge about something slowly spreads to the whole body that you truly know. I know too that I, like every living thing, will have to die some day, but my hands, my feet and my guts still don't know it, which is why death seems so unreal. Time has passed since that June day, and gradually I'm beginning to understand that I can never go back.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“Nobody will be with me when I die. Nobody will touch me, stare at me or press their hot and living fingers on my cooling lids. They won’t hiss and whisper by my deathbed and force the last bitter drops between my teeth.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall

“The circumstances of my former life had often forced me to lie; but now every occasion and every excuse for lies had disappeared.”
― Marlen Haushofer, The Wall