Elfriede Jelinek's Quotes

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The government has once again made the right socially acceptable.

The problem is that it is difficult to translate.

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.

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.

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.