The Painted Bird Quotes

“There's a place beyond words where experience first occurs to which I always want to return. I suspect that whenever I articulate my thoughts or translate my impulses into words, I am betraying the real thoughts and impulses which remain hidden.”
― Jerzy Kosinski, The Painted Bird

“It seems that what I really want is a drug that will increase my consciousness of others, not myself.”
― Jerzy Kosinski, The Painted Bird

“It mattered little if one was mute; people did not understand one another anyway. They collided with or charmed one another, hugged or trampled one another, but everyone knew only himself. His emotions, memory, and senses divided him from others as effectively as thick reeds screen the mainstream from the muddy bank. Like the mountain peaks around us, we looked at one another, separated by valleys, too high to stay unnoticed, too low to touch the heavens.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“One day he trapped a large raven, whose wings he painted red, the breast green, and the tail blue. When a flock of ravens appeared over our hut, Lekh freed the painted bird. As soon as it joined the flock a desperate battle began. The changeling was attacked from all sides. Black, red, green, blue feathers began to drop at our feet. The ravens ran amuck in the skies, and suddenly the painted raven plummeted to the freshly-plowed soil. It was still alive, opening its beak and vainly trying to move its wings. Its eyes had been pecked out, and fresh blood streamed over its painted feathers. It made yet another attempt to flutter up from the sticky earth, but its strength was gone.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“I wondered whether the loss of one's sight would deprive a person also of the memory of everything that he had seen before. If so, the man would no longer be able to see even in his dreams. if not, if only the eyeless could still see through their memory, it would not be too bad. The world seemed to be pretty much the same everywhere, and even though people differed from one another, just as animals and trees did, one should know fairly well what they looked like after seeing them for years. I had lived only seven years, but I remembered a lot of things. when I closed my eyes, many details cam back still more vividly. who knows, perhaps without his eyes the plowboy would start seeing an entirely new, more fascinating world.”
― Jerzy Kosinski, The Painted Bird

“All cats are the same in the dark, says the proverb. But it certainly did not apply to people, with them it was just the opposite. During the day they were all alike, running in their well-defined ways. At night they changed beyond recognition.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“Can the imagination, any more than the boy, be held prisoner ?"

- from the foreword to the 1976 edition of "The Painted Bird”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“Wouldn't it be easier to change people's eyes and hair than to build big furnaces and then catch Jews and Gypsies to burn them?”
― Jerzy Kosinski, The Painted Bird

“She seemed to belong to that pagan, primitive kingdom of birds and forests where everything was infinitely abundant, wild, blooming, and royal in its perpetual decay, death, and rebirth; illicit and clashing with the human world.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“Against the background of bland colors he projected an unfadable blackness. In a world of men with harrowed faces, with smashed eyes, bloody, bruised and disfigured limbs, among the fetid, broken human bodies, of which I had already seen so many, he seemed an example of neat perfection that could not be sullied: the smooth, polished skin of his face, the bright golden hair showing under his peaked cap, his pure metal eyes. Every movement of his body seemed propelled by some tremendous internal force. The granite sound of his language was ideally suited to order the death of inferior, forlorn creatures. I was stung by a twinge of envy I had never experienced before, and I admired the glittering death's-head and crossbones that embellished his tall cap. I thought how good it would be to have such a gleaming and hairless skull instead of my Gypsy face which was so feared and disliked by decent people.
The officer surveyed me sharply. I felt like a squashed caterpillar oozing in the dust, a creature that could not harm anyone yet aroused loathing and disgust. In the presence of such a resplendent being, armed in all the symbols of might and majesty, I was genuinely ashamed of my appearance. I had nothing against his killing me.”
― Jerzy Kosinski , The Painted Bird

“At times, feeling the wind on my brow, I went numb with horror. In my imagination I saw armies of ants and cockroaches calling to one another and scurrying toward my head, to some place under the top of my skull, where they would build new nests. There they would proliferate and eat out my thoughts, one after another, until I would become as empty as the shell of a pumpkin from which all the fruit has been scraped out.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“There was no God, no Holy Trinity, no devils, ghosts, or ghouls rising from graves; there was no Death flying everywhere in search of new sinners to snare. These were all tales for ignorant people who did not understand the natural order of the world, did not believe in their own powers, and therefore had to take refuge in their belief in some God.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“Furthermore, the world of books, like meat in cans, was somehow richer and more flavorful than the everyday variety. In ordinary life, for example, one saw many people without really knowing them, while in books one even knew what people were thinking and planning.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“Perhaps the world would soon become one vast incinerator for burning people.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“If it was true that women and children might become communal property, then every child would have many fathers and mothers, innumerable brothers and sisters. It seemed to be too much to hope for. To belong to everyone!”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“I felt lost in this maze. In the world into which Gavrila was initiating me, human aspirations and expectations were entangled with each other like the roots and branches of great trees in a thick forest, each tree struggling for more moisture from the soil and more sunshine from the sky.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“The Germans puzzled me. What a waste. Was such a destitute, cruel world worth ruling?”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“The treatment for a serious illness consisted of several daily draughts of an infusion of herbs mixed with ground horse bones. Toothache was treated by a compress made of a frog’s thigh with some powdered horse teeth. Burnt horse hoofs were certain to cure colds within two days, while the hipbones of a horse, placed on an epileptic’s body, helped the patient to avoid seizures.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“Según Gavrila, las personas determinaban el curso de su vida y eran las únicas dueñas de su destino. Esta era la razón por la cual todo hombre tenía importancia, y por la cual era esencial que todos supieran qué hacer y hacia dónde encaminarse. El individuo podía pensar que sus actos carecían de importancia, pero no era cierto. Sus actos, como los de otros individuos, formaban un gran mosaico que solo podían discernir quienes se encontraban en la cúspide de la sociedad.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, El pájaro pintado

“Here and there nurses directed emaciated people in striped clothes; the soldiers looked at them in sudden silence—those were the people saved from the furnaces who were returning to life from the concentration camps.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“The trees stood stiffly like sinister monks in black habits guarding the glades and clearings with the broad sleeves of their branches.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“From him I learned that the order of the world had nothing to do with God, and that God had nothing to do with the world. The reason for this was quite simple. God did not exist. The cunning priests had invented Him so they could trick stupid, superstitious people. There was no God, no Holy Trinity, no devils, ghosts, or ghouls rising from graves; there was no Death flying everywhere in search of new sinners to snare. These were all tales for ignorant people who did not understand the natural order of the world, did not believe in their own powers, and therefore had to take refuge in their belief in some God.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“From God’s point of view it seemed to make more sense if everyone lost the war, since everyone was committing murder.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“If it was true that women and children might become communal property, then every child would have many fathers and mothers, innumerable brothers and sisters. It seemed to be too much to hope for. To belong to everyone! Wherever I might go, many fathers would stroke my head with firm, reassuring hands, many mothers would hug me to their bosoms, and many older brothers would defend me against dogs. And I would have to look after my smaller brothers and sisters. There seemed to be no reason for the peasants to be so afraid.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“I was wondering why, if God could make sinners into pillars of salt so easily, salt was so expensive. And why didn’t He turn some sinners into meat or sugar? The villagers certainly needed these as much as salt.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“Brother fought against brother, fathers swung axes against sons in front of their mothers. An invisible force divided people, split families, addled brains. Only the elders remained sane, scurrying from one side to the other, begging the combatants to make peace. They cried in their squeaky voices that there was enough war in the world without starting one in the village.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“man-made lightning”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“It was common belief that the rope of a suicide brings good luck.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“But hatreds of large groups of people must have been the most valuable of all. I could barely imagine the prize earned by the person who managed to inculcate in all blond, blue-eyed people a long-lasting hatred of dark ones.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“The church always overwhelmed me. And yet it was one of the many houses of God scattered all over the world. God did not live in any of them, but it was assumed for some reason that He was present in all of them at once. He was like the unexpected guest for whom the wealthier farmers always kept an additional place at their table.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird