PETER HANDKE

I don't read my own books, but sometimes if there is a new edition I open it and then I feel this life of a writer was not so hopeless, not so bad.

I don't like intrigue. I'm not a man of intrigue.

Of course it would disgust me to tell anyone how to live.

My place is in Serbia if the NATO criminals bomb.

We behave as if being alone were a problem.

I wrote about my journey through the country of Serbia exactly as I have always written my books, my literature.

There are many kinds of truth. But truth communicated by beauty is the only pure one. The only one that touches me in the heart.

I am a writer and not a judge.

I like literature, not opinions. I hate opinions.

I can't define myself. And I'm really happy about this, that I'm not able to make a definition of, even of my work.

The most real dialogue for me is when I am alone, writing.

Samuel Beckett. He is a kind of hero for me.

Sometimes readers are telling me about what they read of my books and I don't remember at all.

Not a word that I have written about Yugoslavia is denounceable, not a single one. It is literature.

Why don't people just open... my works instead of accusing me?

You can't be silent and create silence in being silent. So you have to create silence or, rather, the effect of silence, through words.

An artist is only an exemplary person if you can see in his works how life goes.

I am a writer. I am rooted in Tolstoy, I am rooted in Homer, I am rooted in Cervantes.

I'm a conservative classical writer.

I'm Austrian, but my mother was Slovenian.

Don Juan's story can have no end, and that, on my word, is the definitive and true story of 'Don Juan.'

The so-called world knows everything about Slobodan Milosevic. The so-called world knows the truth. But I don't know the truth. But I watch. I feel. I remember. I question.

I'm not a winner. My nature is not the nature of a winner.

Most older people don't talk about the past so they won't have to admit that their life ran on the wrong rail.

Everything is created to be annihilated.