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.
Elfriede Jelinek

Eroding solidarity paradoxically makes a society more susceptible to the construction of substitute collectives and fascisms of all kinds.
Elfriede Jelinek

I cannot stand public attention, I just can't. Of course, if I may I might write something instead.
Elfriede Jelinek

I do not fight against men, but against the system that is sexist.
Elfriede Jelinek

I do not want to have the feeling of writing "for eternity," so to speak.
Elfriede Jelinek

I have the feeling it will influence my future writing to the extent that without any material worries I could develop a greater ease, even lightheartedness, in my writing.
Elfriede Jelinek

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

I would gladly do it but I am suffering from social phobia. I cannot manage being in a crowd of people.
Elfriede Jelinek

It could draw from a greater reservoir of freedom. The irony could develop an even greater ease.
Elfriede Jelinek

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.
Elfriede Jelinek


My plays are made up of long monologues, which is similar to prose working with the language.
Elfriede Jelinek

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.
Elfriede Jelinek

The government has once again made the right socially acceptable.
Elfriede Jelinek

The problem is that it is difficult to translate.
Elfriede Jelinek