The Clown Quotes
"Almost every day for five years I had left for somewhere and arrived somewhere."
"Ever since Marie left me to marry Züpfner, that Catholic, these actions have become more mechanical than ever."
"There is a way of calculating the distance from station to hotel, from hotel to station—by the taxi meter."
"I am a clown, official description: comedian, no church affiliation, twenty-seven years old."
"Since Marie went over to the Catholics (although Marie is a Catholic herself I feel this phrase is appropriate), the intensity of these two complaints has increased."
"When I am drunk my gestures during a performance become confused—their only justification in the first place is their precision."
"As long as I am sober my stage fright increases till the moment I walk on."
"I imagine monks go through a similar experience when they are in a state of contemplation."
"I thought of Marie: of her voice and her breast, her hands and her hair, her movements and everything we had done with each other."
"For a clown approaching fifty there are only two alternatives: gutter or palace."
"It was so cramped that whenever Marie took the coffee pot off the stove she had to get up and push the chair out of the way."
"It was terrible and magnificent, this workaday world, with coffee pot and rolls and Marie’s washed-out blue and white apron over her green dress."
"The Derkums had long been considered to have come down in the world, and the decline was attributed to the 'political fanaticism' of Marie’s father."
"I would have liked to stay here and sell candy and writing pads to the end of my days, get into bed with Marie at night and sleep with her, really sleep with her."
"The only thing beneath the gutter was the canal, but she didn’t understand what I meant, and I hate explaining a metaphor."
"If a war came, their parents would send them off just like my parents had sent off Henrietta, they would give them some pocket money, a few sandwiches, pat them on the back and say, 'Be a good girl.'"
"I felt cold, turned up my collar, lit a cigarette, made a little detour across the market place, walked along the Franziskanerstrasse and at the corner of Koblenzstrasse jumped on the moving bus."
"It was only when he asked me that I knew I wanted to leave."
"As I drove along the Koblenzstrasse, much too fast, I kept my eye open for a ministerial car to scrape."
"Every morning at all the big railway stations thousands of people arrive to work in the city—and thousands leave by train to work outside the city. Why don’t these people simply exchange their places of work?"
"Sleep might be something like time off, a wonderful thing that humans and animals have in common, but the leisurely quality of leisure consists after all in the conscious experiences of it."
"What a clown needs is quiet, the simulating of what other people call leisure."
"Artistic people always start talking about art at the very moment when the artist happens to feel he is enjoying something like time off."
"The easiest people to exploit are artists and women, and every manager is from one to ninety-nine per cent a pimp."
"I have always argued with Marie as to whether the God in whom she believes takes time off or not, she always insists he does, gets out the Old Testament and reads me the story of the Creation: And He rested on the seventh day."
"To be honest, I had to add Züpfner to the four people who seemed to me to be authentic Catholics: Pope John, Alec Guinness, Marie, Gregory—and Züpfner."
"Marie came close to understanding me, but she never quite understood me."
"A living artist who has run out of cigarettes, can’t buy shoes for his wife, is of no interest to film people because three generations of nincompoops haven’t yet confirmed that he is a genius."
"I watched the little boy coming along the street from the left, toward the station square, he was wet through and held his school satchel open in front of him in the pouring rain."
"I am afraid of being spoken to by half-drunk Germans of a certain age, they always talk about the war, think it was wonderful."
"In spite of everything I believe you are a good clown—but you know nothing about theology."
"You can love a woman without living with her."
"All I ever hear is: law, theology—and when you come right down to it, this is all on account of a stupid bit of paper which the state has to issue."
"Not even the wife who merely tolerates her lord and master is merely a body—and not even the filthiest drunk who goes to a whore is merely a body, neither is the whore."
"You are obviously as monogamous as a donkey."
"I am not in the least anticlerical, don’t kid yourself, I am merely anti-Sommerwild, because you have been unjust and you’re two-faced."
"But in your Holy Scriptures there is this business about pure, clear water—why don’t you pour out some of that?"
"I am quite capable of respecting something I don’t understand."
"It must be terrible for a father to have his first real talk with a son who is almost twenty-eight."
"The most extraordinary experience of our childhood was when we realized we never got enough grub at home."
"We never really had enough to eat, not at home anyway."
"A starving clown—oh well, it’s better than a drunk one."
"To spend money was in his eyes synonymous with wasting it."
"I couldn’t imagine her being involved in all that nonsense, flirting and parties and 'holding fast to Christianity,' sitting around in committees and 'being especially nice to the Socialists, otherwise they get even more complexes.'"
"I felt like a fool as I went back into the apartment and shut the door."
"At the critical moment one always has to be primitive, barbaric."
"You must bear in mind that all critics are silly, vain, and egotistical."
"You can’t imagine how iron determination to believe something helps."
"Sometimes the evening paper is a help: it makes me feel as empty as television."
"The only people who behaved naturally to me over this were the Wienekens and Marie’s father."
"To cling to the past is hypocrisy, because no one knows those moments."
"It is a racial matter that Mother’s executive committee ought to look into one day."
"If purple happens to be the fashion, all these women who are fed with crossed checks wear purple, and when all the women at a party who 'take pride in their appearance' run around in purple, the whole thing looks like a convocation of laboriously animated female bishops."
"Scarcely even a trace of her perfume, she ought to have been merciful and taken my clothes too, given them away or burned them."
"Where property is concerned, Christians are relentless, fair."
"For the first time I sensed how terrible are the objects left behind when someone goes away or dies."
"An artist always carries death with him, like a good priest his breviary."
"People are becoming accustomed to the vocabulary of whores."
"There is no better hiding place for a professional than among amateurs."