Ivo Andric Quotes

“Sadness is also a kind of defence.”

“Between the fear that something would happen and the hope that still it wouldn't, there is much more space than one thinks. On that narrow, hard, bare and dark space a lot of us spend their lives.”

“Lands of great discoveries are also lands of great injustices.”

“I don't plan anything any more. I just live my life.”

“One shouldn't be afraid of the humans. Well, I am not afraid of the humans, but of what is inhuman in them.”

“If people would know how little brain is ruling the world, they would die of fear.”

“Every human generation has its own illusions with regard to civilization; some believe they are taking part in its upsurge, others that they are witnesses of its extinction. In fact, it always both flames and smolders and is extinguished, according to the place and the angle of view.”

“...every woman has some reason to weep and weeping is sweetest when it is for another's sorrow.”

“Whenever a government feels the need of promising peace and prosperity to its citizens by means of a proclamation, it is time to be on guard and expect the opposite.”

“Novelists,’ said Ivo, ‘are to the nineties what cooks were to the eighties, hairdressers to the seventies and pop-stars to the sixties… Merely, you know, an expression of the Zeitgeist, Nobody actually reads novels any more, but it’s a fashionable thing to be a novelist – as long as you don’t entertain people of course. I sometimes think,’ said Ivo, his eyes like industrial diamonds, ‘that my sole virtue is, I’m the only person in London who has no intention of writing any kind of novel, ever.”