The Hunger Angel Quotes

“I have packed myself into silence so deeply and for so long that I can never unpack myself using words. When I speak, I only pack myself a little differently.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“I'm always telling myself I don't have many feelings. Even when something does affect me I'm only moderately moved. I almost never cry. It's not that I'm stronger than the ones with teary eyes, I'm weaker. They have courage. When all you are is skin and bones, feelings are a brave thing. I'm more of a coward. The difference is minimal though, I just use my strength not to cry. When I do allow myself a feeling, I take the part that hurts and bandage it up with a story that doesn't cry, that doesn't dwell on homesickness.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“يالهُ من عبءٍ أن تكون غريباً ! لكن العبء الأكبر هو حينَ تكون القريب الغريب ، أن تتأرجح بين التقرّب والتغرّب.”
― Herta Müller, أرجوحة النفس

“الغَطرسة مرحلة سابقة للسقوط . .”
― Herta Müller, أرجوحة النفس

“To combat death you don't need much of a life, just one that isn't yet finished.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“No words are adequate for the suffering caused by hunger. To this day I have to show hunger that I escaped his grasp. Ever since I stopped having to go hungry, I literally eat life itself. And when I eat, I am locked up inside the taste of eating. For sixty years, ever since I came back from the camp, I have been eating against starvation.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“Little treasures have a sign that says, Here I am.
Bigger treasures have a sign that says, Do you remember.
But the most precious treasures of all will have a sign saying, I was there.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“Some say that over time homesickness loses its specific content, that it starts to smolder and only then becomes all-consuming, because it’s no longer focused on a concrete home.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“Now I was someone else. We knew each other in a way we no longer were and never would be again. Being a stranger is hard, but being a stranger when you’re so impossibly close is unbearable.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“Sometimes things acquire a tenderness, a monstrous tenderness we don’t expect from them.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“الكنوز الصغيرة هي تلك التي كتب عليها «هذا أنا هنا».الكنوز الكبيرة هي المكتوب عليها «أنت تعرف بالتأكيد»وأحلاها هي التي كتب عليها «كنتُ هنا»”
― Herta Müller, أرجوحة النفس

“Nothing had anything to do with me. I was locked up inside myself and evicted from myself. I didn’t belong to them and I was missing me.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“Ich trage stilles Gepäck. Ich habe mich so tief und so lang ins Schweigen gepackt, ich kann mich in Worten nie auspacken. Ich packe mich nur anders ein, wenn ich rede.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“Hunger is an object.

The angel has climbed into my brain.
The angel doesn't think. He thinks straight.
He's never absent.
He knows my boundaries and he knows his direction.
He knows where I come from and he knows what he does to me.
He knew all this before he met me, and he knows my future.
He lingers in every capillary like quicksilver. First a sweetness in my throat. Then pressure on my stomach and chest. The fear is too much.
Everything has become lighter.
The hunger angel leans to one side as he walks with open eyes. He staggers around in small circles and balances on my breath-swing. He knows the homesickness in the brain and the blind alleys in the air.
The air angel leans to the other side as he walks with open hunger.
H whispers to himself and to me: where there is loading there can also be unloading. He is of the same flesh that he is deceiving. Will have deceived.
He knows about saved bread and cheek-bread and he sends out the white hare.
He says he's coming back but stays where he is.
When he comes, he comes with force.
It's utterly clear:
1 shovel load = 1 gram bread.
Hunger is an object.

”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“Monstrous tenderness gets tangled in guilt differently from intentional cruelty. More deeply. And for longer.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel: A Novel

“Cement is as impossible to escape as the dust of the earth, you can’t tell where it comes from because it’s already there. And apart from hunger, the only thing in our minds that’s as quick as cement is homesickness. It steals from you the same way cement does, and you can drown in it as well.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“And I’m different without you. You’re the only one who thinks you’re never different.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“The hunger angel looks at me from the sky and says: Ride back.
I say: But then I’ll die.
If you die, I’ll make everything orange, and it won’t hurt, he says.
And I ride back, and he keeps his word. As I die, the sky over every watchtower turns orange, and it doesn’t hurt.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“I was all too aware that there's an unspoken law that you should never start to cry if you have too many reasons to do so. I told myself that my tears were due tot he cold, and I believed myself.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“Ich schäme mich nicht, wenn ich sage, das Taschentuch war der einzige Mensch, der sich im Lager um mich kümmerte. Ich bin mir sicher, auch heute noch. Manchmal kriegen die Dinge eine Zartheit, eine monströse, die man von ihnen nicht erwartet.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“In the trinity of skin, bones, and brown water, men and women lose all difference.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“Todo lo que tengo lo llevo conmigo.

O: todo lo mío lo llevo conmigo.

He llevado todo lo que tenía. No era mío. Era o algo destinado a otras finalidades o de otra persona. […]
Llevo un equipaje de silencio. Me he rodeado de un silencio tan hondo y duradero que nunca acierto a abrirme con las palabras. Cuando hablo, solamente me cierro de otra manera.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“En el pasillo de madera, justo al lado del contador del gas, la abuela dijo: SÉ QUE VOLVERÁS. No retuve esa frase en la memoria deliberadamente. Me la llevé al campo de trabajo sin darme cuenta. No tenía ni idea de que me acompañaba. Pero una frase así es libre. Ella actuó en mi interior más que todos los libros que me llevé. SÉ QUE VOLVERÁS se convirtió en cómplice de la pala del corazón y en adversario del ángel del hambre. Yo, que he regresado, puedo decirlo: Una frase así te mantiene con vida.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“But everyone thought you were dead. You didn’t write, that’s why you’re alive now.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel: A Novel

“The hunger angel approached everyone, without restraint. He knew that where things can be unloaded, other things can be loaded. In terms of mathematics, the results could be horrifying: if each person has his own hunger angel, then every time someone dies, a hunger angel is released.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel: A Novel

“Everyone eats his words by himself although we’re all eating together. There’s no thought for the hunger of others, you can’t hunger together. Cabbage soup was our main food, but it mainly took the meat from our bones and the sanity from our minds. The hunger angel ran around in hysterics. He lost all proportion, growing more in a single day than grass in an entire summer or snow in an entire winter.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel: A Novel

“Everything that happens is always simple. And there’s a principle to how things proceed, assuming that they last.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“Boredom is fear's patience. Fear doesn't want to exaggerate. Only on occasion--and fear considers this very important--does it want to know how things stand with me.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“I'm drawn outside to the empty yard of the afternoon. The wind tosses thin snow that crackles against my neck. With open hunger the angel leads me to the garbage pile behind the mess hall. I stumble after him, trailing a little way behind, dangling from the roof of my mouth. Step after step, I follow my feet, assuming they aren't his. Hunger is my direction, assuming it isn't his. The angel lets me pass. He isn't turning shy, he just doesn't want to be seen with me. Then I bend my back, assuming it isn't his. My craving is raw, my hands are wild. They are definitely my hands: the angel does not touch garbage. I shove the potato peelings into my mouth and close both eyes, that way I can taste them better, the frozen peels are sweet and glassy.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“Es gibt keine passenden Wörter fürs Hungerleiden. Ich muss dem Hunger heute noch zeigen, dass ich ihm entkommen bin. Ich esse buchstäblich das Leben selbst, seit ich nicht mehr hungern muss. Ich bin eingesperrt in den Geschmack des Essens, wenn ich esse. Ich esse seit meiner Heimkehr aus dem Lager, seit sechzig Jahren, gegen das Verhungern.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel