Thomas Bernhard Quotes

Translation is the art of failure.

We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.

"We speak different languages, as usual," responded Woland, "but this does not change the things we speak about. Well?..."

I am a candid interview and I have a dark and dry sense of humor - a very Canadian sense of humor and I am only learning now stupidly that you can't read tongue. When I say something funny in a newspaper and I meant it to be funny, it doesn't read that way.

Language is a social art.

The problem is that it is difficult to translate.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

One of the nice things about the United States is that, wherever you go, people speak the same language. So native New Yorkers can move to San Francisco, Houston, or Milwaukee and still understand and be understood by everyone they meet. Right? Well, not exactly. Or, as a native New Yorker might put it, 'Wrong!'

We have to realize that when we talk in front of other people about things only we can understand, those people will not be able to avoid getting wrong impressions.

An ancient father says that a dog we know is better company than a man whose language we do not understand.

Nothing is so impenetrable as laughter in a language you don't understand.

If you can't get yourself understood, you may have trouble, so you need some interpretation every now and again wherever you might be.

You have to put up with the risk of being misunderstood if you are going to try to communicate.

One of the hardest things in the world is to convey a meaning accurately from one mind to another.

Grandma frowned and yelled something in Russian. She could have been saying, 'Open up, your best friend is here.' On the other hand, it could have been, 'America is a great country because of canned ravioli.

The diversity of language alienates man from man

Language is the most beautiful and destructive thing because it allows you to express yourself, but it totally confuses everything.

One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot be hostile to man.

You couldn't have human society without language.

After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?

No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn't understand, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language.

Because of my language and the pantomime with which most Europeans accompany their speech, I was catalogued as a heavy.

I'm not a xenophobe - I think immigration is a good thing for most countries - but they transmute the foibles of their native tongues into English in a way that's difficult to figure out.

It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.

People will read into what you say no matter what, so it doesn't matter to me.