A Quote by Imre Kertesz

Talking is not enough; words don't clarify anything. I'll have to hit upon something, but what? — © Imre Kertesz
Talking is not enough; words don't clarify anything. I'll have to hit upon something, but what?
Mum would hit us with anything. You'd see her looking for something to hit you with, and you'd think, please let it be something reasonably soft. She threw a chair at me once. It was like being in a western.
It is well enough, when one is talking to a friend, to lodge in an odd word by way of counsel now and then; but there is something mighty irksome in its staring upon one in a letter, where one ought to see only kind words and friendly remembrances.
We need to send our words out in the direction we want them to go. In other words, we need to start talking victory when we’re staring at defeat. We need to start talking healing when we’re feeling sick. We need to start blessing and prosperity when we don’t have anything. We need to speak about marching when we feel like quitting.
People have become afraid of love because in love also, death penetrates. If two lovers are sitting side by side in deep love and intimacy, not even talking.... Talking is an escape, an escape from love. When two lovers are talking that simply shows they are avoiding the intimacy. Words in-between give distance - with no words distance disappears, death appears. In silence there is death just lurking around - a beautiful phenomenon. But people are so afraid that they go on talking whether it is needed or not. They go on talking about anything, everything - but they cannot keep silent.
If you have words and want to write music for them, the words hit you with a feeling which you can't really describe in words, and so what you do is to put music to them and in this way you make contact with the words, through the musical thing. It happens when two feelings come together and they do something together and they compliment each other.
I think art is communication. To that extent, it can be the words between the words. It has a possibility of communicating something more than people can do with prose or just talking.
What I want to do is to create a conversation piece and something people remember. I want to make it repetitive enough but not use what I call 'thin thinking' - the kind of thing anyone can do. A hook tells me what you are talking about and it doesn't have to be a lot of words.
I always look for... hopefully look for a challenge. And you're always looking for the next summit to hit. Even if it's a personal one. It needn't be some great sense of monumental... It just has to be important to you and big enough and special enough and individual enough that you get up for it. And that can be anything.
That's what stock-car racing is. You hit someone, or you get hit. That's something I had to learn. It's a key factor in why I'm so aggressive. I don't want to have to hit you. But if you're going to hit me, I'm going to hit you.
To look at life without words is not to lose the ability to form words- to think, remember, and plan. To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is only through silence that one can discover something new to talk about. One who talked incessantly, without stopping to look and listen, would repeat himself ad nauseam. It is the same with thinking, which is really silent talking. It is not, by itself, open to the discovery of anything new, for its only novelties are simply arrangements of old words and ideas.
Anything will lase if you hit it hard enough.
Why am I talking about all this? Who am I talking to? I send out these words, these thoughts, simply because it is time. Time for what, I do not know and it does not matter because it is what I want and that is always reason enough for me.
And if there is anybody out there who is crazy enough to want to become a writer, I'd say go ahead, spit in the eye of the sun, hit those keys, it's the best madness going, the centuries need help, the species cry for light and gamble and laughter. Give it to them. There are enough words for all of us.
If you hit somebody hard enough, they will give up. You can feel their body go limp and they'll just surrender. So every time I hit somebody, the goal is to knock myself out. I know that if I hit somebody hard enough that I can feel it, it's hurting them 10 times worse.
Words are powerful. When I make mistakes I just try to come back and clarify what I meant.
All I can do in my writing is to stimulate a certain amount of thought, clarify some technical facts and date my work. But when I preach sharpness, brilliancy, scale, etc., I am just mouthing words, because no words can really describe those terms and qualities it takes the actual print to say, “here it is.
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