Bruno Schulz Quotes

There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.

Keep walking. Hot night right now, right here. All you have is what you are. All you want is much too much. All you get is so much less. All you feel is nothing. All you see is darkness. All you know is senseless and all you can do about it is ride.

Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished. Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there's a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap. I can't be punished any more. I'll go now to my kitchen, ten feet by ten feet by ten feet, and wait for him to whistle me. Nice dimensions, nice proportions, I'll lean on the table, and look at the wall, and wait for him to whistle me.

When hope is gone, time is punishment.

I think about giving up. I almost do.

I turn and turn in my cell like a fly that doesn't know where to die.

In jail I was just like everybody else, I was sitting there praying, feeling caged.

No one will ever feel sorry for me.

Patience is the strongest of strong drinks; for it kills the giant despair.

We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it

I am of the opinion, and even more so the older I get, that it is more difficult to have hope than it is to despair. And I mean this in the sense that in order to have hope you must acknowledge the despair and then you have to get beyond it. Taken from a radio interview given on BBC Radio 4's Open Book

Cold as winter, strong as stone; She faced the darkness all alone. A silver goddess; a reflection. A mirage; a recollection. No return; no turning back. The past is gone, the future, black. Serpents gather in their nest, And she stands above the rest. Shadows hunt; she hunts the shadow. The moon is risen; she stands below. She views her world through the eyes of others. Black and white; there are no colors, As she looks down upon a shattered youth. A shattered mirror shows a shattered truth.

The formula for prison is a lack of space counterbalanced by a surplus of time. This is what really bothers you, that you can't win. Prison is lack of alternatives, and the telescopic predictability of the future is what drives you crazy.

I had no hope. Yet expectation lived on in me, the last thing she had left behind. What further consummations, mockeries, torments did I still anticipate? I had no idea as I abided in the unshaken belief that the time of cruel wonders was not yet over.

The soul does not give itself up to despair until it has exhausted all illusions.

Do not despair of your life. You have force enough to overcome your obstacles.

I survive all those battles," she growled, "and I get defeated by a stupid chunk of rock!

We need hope, or else we cannot endure.

If we lose our hope, that's our real disaster!

It takes far less courage to kill yourself than it takes to wake up one more time. It is harder to stay where you are than to get out.

What hope is there?" I asked. "If even angels fall, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.

What use would wings be to a man bound in iron fetters? They would only drive him to even greater despair.

Weave me a rope from this dark despair, from this dull-eyed pain... Weave me a rope from this endless night, from this distant shore... Weave me a rope that will pull me through these impossible times.

i laced my shoes with sorrow and walked a weary road dead end streets don't come undone with double knots wing tipped shoes that walk on air through vacant lots