A biography for Elfriede Jelinekhasn’t been written yet.
“Literature that keeps employing new linguistic and formal modes of expression to draft a panorama of society as a whole while at the same time exposing it, tearing the masks from its face - for me that would be deserving of an award.”
“My plays are made up of long monologues, which is similar to prose working with the language.”
“I do not want to have the feeling of writing 'for eternity', so to speak.”
“I am not made to be pulled into the public as a person. I feel threatened there.”
“My training in music and composition then led me to a kind of musical language process in which, for example, the sound of the words I play with has to expose their true meaning against their will so to speak.”
“I seek to cast an incorruptible gaze on women, especially where they are the accomplices of men.”
“I would gladly do it but I am suffering from social phobia. I cannot manage being in a crowd of people.”
“I cannot stand public attention, I just can't. Of course, if I may I might write something instead.”
“My inspiration came especially in the 1950s through the Vienna Group founded by writer H.C. Artmann. It showed me that if you want to say something, you have to let the language itself say it, because language is usually more meaningful than the mere content that one wishes to convey.”
“Internet is exemplary for me. I do not want to have the feeling of writing 'for eternity,' so to speak. The fleetingness of the Internet has therefore become very attractive to me.”
“No art can possibly comfort HER then, even though art is credited with so many things, especially an ability to offer solace. Sometimes, of course, art creates the suffering in the first place.”
“It doesn't suit me as a person to be put on public display.”
“It could draw from a greater reservoir of freedom. The irony could develop an even greater ease.”
“She will prolong her life by the length of her story, even though time will wear on inexorably as she tells it, thus depriving her of the chance to have a new experience.”
“I find the Internet to be the most wonderful thing there is. It connects people. Everyone can have input.”
“A woman who becomes famous through her work reduces her erotic value. A woman is permitted to chat or babble, but speaking in public with authority is still the greatest transgression.”
“Sunday, the day for the language of leisure.”
“I am a sort of justice fanatic, and I always have to give a voice to those who get a raw deal.”
“Ah, lust! How one would like to make it the cornerstone of self! But I wouldn't go ahead and build on it if I were you.”
“Eroding solidarity paradoxically makes a society more susceptible to the construction of substitute collectives and fascisms of all kinds.”