Howard Jacobson Quotes

I wake up at night thinking about Euripides' 'Hecuba.' That to me is a story that says so much about what it is to be a human being in the middle of a world of unreliable things and people.

There's so much of, it could have been a very critical examination of what happened, and really the emotional lives of the people involved sort of carry the characters forward.

I think Shakespeare had a lot to contribute with his understanding of the human condition.

War is not a petri dish to examine and analyze our emotions.

Yes, war is hell. It is awful. It involves human beings killing other human beings, sometimes innocent civilians. That is why we despise war.

Fiction's about what it is to be a human being.

Any art worthy of its name should address 'life', 'man', 'nature', 'death' and 'tragedy'.

When we write about Auschwitz, we must know that Auschwitz, in a certain sense at least, suspended literature. One can only write a black novel about Auschwitz or - you should excuse the expression - a cheap serial, which begins in Auschwitz and is still not over.

Auschwitz will forever remain the black hole of the entire human history.

In 'The Pianist,' Polanski transformed his ghastly knowledge of the camps into an act of artistic self-expression.

It was a total and absolute surprise to find out that what was inside the concentration camps was a sea of skeletons. What is clear to me, therefore, is that while the tragedy of war grinds on, the contemporary aesthetics of the tragedy seem not only confused but, in some way, suspicious.

Yet another last night. The last night at home, the last night in the ghetto, the last night in the train, and, now, the last night in Buna. How much longer were our lives to be dragged out from one 'last night' to another?

There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God.

The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy ? that is every man?s tragedy.

Killing rips the soul apart.

Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.

But what will he do when he sees only too clearly why his patient is ill; when he sees that it arises from his having no love, but only sexuality; no faith, because he is afraid to grope in the dark; no hope, because he is disillusioned by the world and by life; and no understanding, because he has failed to read the meaning of his own existence?

I look at some of the great novelists, and I think the reason they are great is that they're telling the truth. The fact is they're using made-up names, made-up people, made-up places, and made-up times, but they're telling the truth about the human being- what we are capable of, what makes us lose, laugh, weep, fall down, and gnash our teeth and wring our hands and kill each other and love each other.

I have never quite understood - and this is no doubt my failing - I never quite understood why you would read fiction to understand the human condition.

We can only begin to live when we conceive life as Tragedy.

From all our observations we may collect with certainty, that misery is the lot of man, but cannot discover in what particular condition it will find most alleviations.

When death comes too near, comedy and tragedy fall silent.

But I know I would not go out. I had taken this time to fall in love instead — in love with the sort of helplessness I had not felt in death — the helplessness of being alive, the dark bright pity of being human — feeling as you went, groping in corners and opening your arms to light - all of it part of navigating the unknown.

The more we know, the more pain we have. But because we are human beings, this must be. Otherwise we become objects rather than subjects.

Certain experiences you can't survive, and afterward you don't fully exist, even if you failed to die.