Best 14 quotes of Harry Mulisch on MyQuotes

All cows were like other cows, all tigers like all other tigers - What on earth happened to human beings?

A man who has never been hungry may possess a more refined palate, but he has no idea what it means to eat.

Besides, whoever keeps the future in front of him and the past at his back is doing something else that's hard to imagine. For the image implies that events somehow already exist in the future, reach the present at a determined moment, and finally come to rest in the past. But nothing exists in the future; it is empty; one might die at any minute. Therefore such a person has his face toward the void, whereas it is the past behind him that is visible, stored in the memory.

If written in the three-letter words of the four-letter alphabet,a human being is determined by a genetic narrative long enough to fill the equivalent of 500 Bibles.In the meantime human beings have discovered this for themselves. That's right. They have uncovered our profoundest concept -- namely, that life is ultimately reading. They themselves are the Book of Books.

If you find life absurd, shouldn’t you find death precisely meaningful?

I'm afraid love is just a word.

In a world full of war, famine, oppression, deceit, monotony, what—apart from the eternal innocence of animals—offers an image of hope? A mother with a newborn child in her arms? The child may end up as a murderer or a murder victim, so that the hopeful image is a prefiguration of a pietà: a mother with her newly dead child on her lap.

I never understood how anyone could feel small compared with the universe. After all, man knows how overwhelmingly large it is, and a few others things besides, and that means he is not small. The fact that man has discovered all this precisely proves his greatness.

Perhaps, he thought, true pure love, like all flowers, flourished best with its roots in muck and mud. Perhaps that was a law of life that held everything together.

Using someone's name during a conversation was like a casual caress, like stroking their hair.

Boundaries have to be continuously sealed off, but it's a hopeless job, for everything touches everything else in this world. A beginning never disappears, not even with an ending.

Die Frage, was nun eigentlich war zwischen ihnen, würden sie später erörtern, wenn all die Tage in ihrer Erinnerung zu einem einzigen, für immer unvergeßlichen Tag zusammengeflossen sein würden. Auch die Griechen, wußte Onno, die die Grundlage für die westliche Kultur gelegt hatten, besaßen kein Wort für „Kultur“. Die Wörter entstanden erst, wenn die Sache verschwunden war.

Ik dacht vroeger ook, dat de jodenhaat alles met Christus had te maken, maar dat is niet zo; die was er ver vóór Christus ook al, er worden alleen steeds nieuwe redenen voor bedacht: dat ze rijk en patserig zijn, dat ze arm en smerig zijn, dat ze aan de touwtjes van het plutocratische grootkapitalisme trekken, dat ze revolutionairen zijn en het communisme op hun geweten hebben, dat ze geen vaderland bezitten, dat ze hun vaderland herinrichten,-alles is goed, als het maar slecht is.

Wie het gedaan heeft, heeft het gedaan en niet iemand anders.