Elfriede Jelinek

“I only enjoy what I can see, because I don't feel anything. For example, your new wallpaper. I like it and it can stay, it's quiet and it keeps quiet at least. Luckily I don't have to feel it, just see it.”

“I describe the relationship between man and woman as a Hegelian relationship between master and slave. As long as men are able to increase their sexual value through work, fame or wealth, while women are only powerful through their body, beauty and youth, nothing will change.”

“I can really write what I want. I can take time; I can do nothing for a year. That is paradise.”

“The problem is that it is difficult to translate.”

“I do not fight against men, but against the system that is sexist.”

“As is said about most writers, on the one hand, all I ever did from when I was a child was read, and I was a loner, which was furthered by my parents and my upbringing. On the other hand, the more I read, the more I felt this well-known fissure between me and the world.”

“As much as football can cause war, it can also cause peace. Football is a kind of Geiger counter of civilisation, or a catalyst for good as well as bad.”

“How can the writer know reality if it is that which gets into him and sweeps him away, forever onto the sidelines.”

“The moment workers can afford too little they rebel. The last time this was a real danger was 1950. Communists took advantage of supply problems and stirred up gullible people against their very own country.”

“I associate the metaphor of sport with war. The unrest in the former Yugoslavia, after all, started with a football match that then became charged in nationalist ways and ended in violence.”

“The smaller a group, the easier it is for more people to argue and enter into discussions. The U.S. is vast. It's too large. The intellectuals hide out in enclaves, in big cities or universities, like a bunch of chickens hiding from a fox.”

“The government has once again made the right socially acceptable.”

“I think isolation is one of the greatest problems, an ever-growing obstacle to political solidarity.”

“As long as I have books and DVDs, I don't miss much.”