Elfriede Jelinek

It doesn't suit me as a person to be put on public display.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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. On the other hand, the more I read, the more I felt this well-known fissure between me and the world.

Stealing isn't so easy, often it's hard work, otherwise we'd all be doing it.

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.

Sunday the day for the language of leisure.

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

It's a wonderfully democratic method, publishing a text on the Internet.

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

It's interesting that the treatment of historical events by art precedes the civilisation of people through democracy.

Sunday, the day for the language of leisure.

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

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.

I am not made to be pulled into the public as a person. I feel threatened there.

I don't do what I do willingly, but I have to do it.

I find the Internet to be the most wonderful thing there is. It connects people. Everyone can have input.

I'm not one of those women writers who are obsessed by their ego, possibly because I don't have one.

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

As long as I have books and DVDs, I don't miss much.

I can really write what I want. I can take time; I can do nothing for a year. That is paradise.

The problem is that it is difficult to translate.

I associate the metaphor of sport with war. The unrest in the former Yugoslavia, after all, started with a football match that then became charged in nationalist ways and ended in violence.

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

The government has once again made the right socially acceptable.

I describe the relationship between man and woman as a Hegelian relationship between master and slave. As long as men are able to increase their sexual value through work, fame or wealth, while women are only powerful through their body, beauty and youth, nothing will change.

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

I seek to cast an incorruptible gaze on women, especially where they are the accomplices of men.