The Drinker Quotes

“I believe the last thing that runs through the brain of a dying man is hope.”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“I am utterly alone with myself, I see clearly that from now on I shall always be utterly alone with myself. I am somewhere where neither love nor friendship can reach, I am in hell … I have sinned for a brief while and I am being punished for it, incredibly severely, for a long time! But one should have known, before one sinned, how severe the punishment would be. One should have been warned beforehand, then one would not have sinned …”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“Had I lost love and appreciation because I had grown so bad, or had I grown so bad because I had lost its encouragement?”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“And while I walked out again into the countryside, which was slowly growing darker and darker, it became painfully clear to me that I was played out. I had nothing left to live for, I had lost my footing in society, and I felt I had not the strength to look for a new one, nor to fight to regain the old.”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“he could do everything, but he did it in a brilliant offhand way, he was irresponsibility itself, nothing was durable.”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“He threw himself against the bars, he cared nothing that some swine beat his face till the blood came, he fought day after day with an enemy invisible to us, and day after day he took up the fight anew.”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“Only a short time before I had felt like a convalescent, and had greeted the familiar things around me with fresh interest, convinced that today a new life was beginning … and now the old creaking mill of our dissension was starting up again, grinding all my good resolutions to dust.”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“And when I have finished crying, the sun is still outside my window, the cool fragrant curtains sway in the gentle breeze. Life is still here, young and smiling. You can begin again at any time, it only depends on you.”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“How I degraded myself, oh, how I degraded myself! A burning wave of remorse sweeps over me. The shame of it, the torturing shame of it! I hide my face in my hands, I shut my eyes tight.… I don’t want to see, I don’t want to hear, I don’t want to think any more. I set my jaw, I grind my teeth. I groan: “It can’t be true! It isn’t true! It can’t have been me! I’ve dreamed it all! I must forget all about it. Straight away, I must forget all about it. None of it must be true!” I tremble as if with a cramp, and then come the tears, tears for all that I have so wantonly thrown away. Endless, bitter, and eventually comforting tears.”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“oh, how beautiful life is! Intoxication, forget-fulness, to float along on the stream of forgetfulness, into the twilight, deep into the darkness where there is neither failure nor regret … good alcohol, I salute you.”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“There’s always something lacking for human happiness, we can never be perfectly content.”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“And here …,” I took out a hundred-mark note and laid it beside the other. “This is for you because I hate you and because you’re ruining me. Take it, take it. I don’t want anything from you, anything at all! Go away!”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“I took the bottle and poured another drink. Already it was quite clear to me that I was completely drunk and that I should not take any more. Even so, the urge to go on drinking was stronger. The coloured web in my brain enticed me, the dark untrodden jungles of my inner self tempted me; from afar, a soft seductive voice was calling.”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“I had already forgotten all that had happened and all that lay ahead, I lived only for the moment, for this reserved yet knowing girl who treated me with such obvious contempt.”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“I was a failure, a failure of the most disgraceful and cowardly kind. The thought was unbearable, and I began to play with the idea of not returning home at all, but of going out into the world, of submerging myself in the darkness somewhere, in some darkness where a man might disappear without trace, without a final cry.”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“Betrayed and deceived. Deceived and defrauded. But at once I shrug my shoulders: that’s right! Lower and lower. Deeper and deeper into it. Now there’s no holding back!”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“I felt incapable of making any such effort at the moment. For some reason I had been feeling rather low for nearly a year now. I was more and more inclined to let things go their own way and not excite myself too much. I was in need of rest—why, I do not know.”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“Nobody forced me to speak. Nobody? Ah yes, alcohol had made me do it. When once I had understood, when once I had realised to the full, what a liar alcohol is, and what liars it makes of honest men, I swore never to touch another drop and even to give up my occasional glass of beer. But what are resolutions, what are plans?”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“I was not in any real difficulties yet; my affairs were merely going through a period of stagnation which could certainly have been overcome, at this stage, by the exercise of a little initiative. But I just couldn’t summon up that initiative. I was too depressed by all the mute dislike of myself which I encountered at every twist and turn.”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“I swore that I would be better. But man gets used to anything, and I am afraid that perhaps he gets used quickest of all to living in a state of degradation.”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“İnsanı ayakta tutan şey umut olmalı. Ölmekte olan bir kişinin kafasından silinen son duygunun da umut olduğunu sanıyorum.”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker

“Που μου θύμισε τα παλιά, με αποτρέλανε. Καμιά συγκίνηση- νιώθω μόνο την άβυσσο που μας χωρίζει από εκείνο το καταποντισμένο Κάποτε, τότε που ήμασταν ίσοι, ενώ τώρα αυτή τα έχει όλα κι εγώ είμαι υποψήφιος του Τίποτα.”
― Hans Fallada, The Drinker