Bruno Schulz Quotes
- The journey went on and on. Barely one or two passengers were travelling on that forgotten branch line, where the train ran only once a week. Never had I seen carriages of such archaic style, spacious as rooms, dark and full of nooks, withdrawn from the other lines long ago. Those corridors deviating at different angles and those empty, labyrinthine and cold compartments had something oddly forlorn about them, something almost ghastly. I made my way from carriage to carriage in search of some snug corner. It was windy everywhere — cold draughts cut a path through those interiors, penetrating the whole train from end to end. People sat here and there on the floor with their bundles, not daring to occupy the vacant and excessively high seats. Those bulging cedar seats were as cold as ice anyway, and sticky with age. No passengers boarded at the empty stations. Without a whistle, without a puff, the train went slowly and, as it seemed, pensively on its way. - View Quote Details on The journey went on and on. Barely one or two…
- Along came the yellow and thoroughly boring days of winter. A torn and tattered, too-short mantle of snow covered the ruddy earth. It was too meagre for the many roofs, and so they stood out black or rust coloured, arks of shingle or thatch concealing the smoke-blackened expanses of the attics inside them — charred black cathedrals bristling with ribs of rafters, purlins and joists — dark lungs of the winter gales. Each dawn uncovered new vent pipes and chimney stacks, sprung up in the night, blown out by the nocturnal gale — the black pipes of the Devil’s organs. Chimney sweeps could not drive away the crows that perched in the evenings like living black leaves on the branches of the trees by the church; they rose up again, flapping, finally to cling once more, each to its own place on its own branch; but at daybreak they took to the air in great flocks — clouds of soot, flakes of undulating and fantastic lampblack, smearing the dull-yellow streaks of the dawn with their twinkling cawing. - View Quote Details on Along came the yellow and thoroughly boring days of winter…
- Only today do I understand the lonely heroism with which he single-handedly gave battle against the boundless element of boredom numbing the town. Bereft of all support, without acknowledgement on our part, that astonishing man defended the lost cause of poetry. He was a wonderful mill into the hoppers of which was poured the bran of the empty hours, bursting into bloom in its mechanism with all the colours and aromas of oriental spices. But we, having grown accustomed to that metaphysical prestidigitator’s magnificent jugglery, tended to misapprehend the value of his sovereign magic that had delivered us from the lethargy of our empty days and nights. - View Quote Details on Only today do I understand the lonely heroism with which…
- Everyone knows that in the course of the usual, ordinary years, whimsical time occasionally brings forth from its bosom other years — odd years, degenerate years in which an aberrant thirteenth month sprouts up somewhere, like a little sixth finger on a hand. - View Quote Details on Everyone knows that in the course of the usual, ordinary…
- I have never seen the Old Testament prophets, but at the sight of that man floored by divine anger, widely straddling his enormous porcelain chamber pot and shielded by the tornado of his arms, a cloud of desperate contortions over which his voice rose even higher, alien and hard, I understood the divine anger of holy men. - View Quote Details on I have never seen the Old Testament prophets, but at…
- Has the reader heard anything about the parallel strands of time, in double track time? Yes, such branch turnings of time do exist, a little illegal to be sure, and problematic, but when one carries such contraband as I do — such unclassifiable, supernumerary events — one cannot be too particular. And so at some point in my story I shall attempt to take such a branch turning — a siding — and shunt this illegal history into it. - View Quote Details on Has the reader heard anything about the parallel strands of…
- Ah, life — young and frail life, sent forth from the dependable darkness, from the snug warmth of the maternal bosom into a great and unfamiliar, illuminated world; how it flinches and draws back, how it hesitates — full of aversion and discouragement! — to accept the venture proposed to it. - View Quote Details on Ah, life — young and frail life, sent forth from…
- Adela returned on luminous mornings, like Pomona from the fire of the enkindled day, tipping out of her basket the colourful beauty of the sun [...] - View Quote Details on Adela returned on luminous mornings, like Pomona from the fire…
- And then there is all this highly improper manipulation of time. These indecent dealings, sneaking into its mechanism through the back, riskily tiptoeing around its precarious secrets! Sometimes one feels like banging on the table and shouting at the top of one’s voice: ‘Enough of this! Keep your hands off time! Time is untouchable — it is forbidden to provoke time! Space is for man — in space you can go where you please, turn somersaults, fall head over heels, leap from star to star. But for the love of God, leave time alone!’ - View Quote Details on And then there is all this highly improper manipulation of…
- ‘Too long have we lived under the terror of the matchless perfection of the Demiurge,’ said my father. ‘Too long has the perfection of his handiwork paralysed our own creativity. We have no desire to compete with him. Our ambition is not to rival him. We merely want to be creators in our own, lower sphere — we crave creativity for ourselves; we crave the joy of creation; in a word, we crave Demiurgy.’ - View Quote Details on ‘Too long have we lived under the terror of the…
- Spring’s horoscope is so measureless! Who can take amiss its intense scrutiny, reading it in any one of a hundred ways, contriving blindly and syllabising in all directions, lucky when anything at all can be deciphered among the misleading chatter of the birds? It reads that text forwards and backwards, losing the meaning and starting again at the beginning, in all of its versions, its thousand alternatives, its trills and twitters. For spring’s text is full of meaning in its implications and insinuations, in the ellipses dotted without letters in its empty blueness — and in the vacant gaps between the syllables the birds capriciously insert their own guesses and suppositions. - View Quote Details on Spring’s horoscope is so measureless! Who can take amiss its…
- And one of those plants, yellow and full of milky juice in pale stems, now puffed up only with air, discharged only air from its empty shoots, only fluff in the form of feathery, milky balls, strewn by the breeze and quietly pervading the azure silence. - View Quote Details on And one of those plants, yellow and full of milky…
- It was a man. A man chained up, whom I had by incomprehensible means, in a simplifying, metaphorical, comprehensive elision, taken for a dog. Please don’t misunderstand me. A dog it was, to be sure, but in human form. The quality of the canine is an internal quality, and it can manifest itself just as well in human as in animal shape. - View Quote Details on It was a man. A man chained up, whom I…
- August’s unkempt and harridan luxuriance had grown gigantic on those broad shoulders of the garden, in silent hollows of enormous burdocks holding sway with their flaps of shaggy, leafy tin plate, their straggling tongues of fleshy green. Those bulging burdock rag dolls abounded there like wanton hags half devoured by their own crazy skirts. - View Quote Details on August’s unkempt and harridan luxuriance had grown gigantic on those…
- ‘Sadly, Adela,’ said Father, ‘you never could comprehend matters of a higher order. Always and everywhere you have thwarted my actions with your outbursts of mindless animosity. But today, encased in armour, I mock the tickling by which you once drove a helpless one to despair.’ - View Quote Details on ‘Sadly, Adela,’ said Father, ‘you never could comprehend matters of…
- Sometimes a whole bright day passes in explosions of the sun, accumulations of clouds hanging luminously and chromatically at the fringes, full of redness breaking off at every edge. People go about stupefied by the light, their closed eyes exploding inside with rockets, Roman candles and powder-kegs. Later, toward evening, that hurricane fire of light softens; the horizon has grown rotund, beautiful and full of azure — like a glass ball in a garden with its miniature and illuminated panorama of the world — in a happily ordered composition above which the clouds are arranged, its conclusive toppings, unfolding in a long row like rouleaus of golden medals, or peals of bells combining in rosy litanies. - View Quote Details on Sometimes a whole bright day passes in explosions of the…
- In July, my father went to take the waters, and he left me with my mother and older brother, at the mercy of the summer days, glowing white and stunning. We browsed, stupefied by the light, through that great book of the holiday, in which every page was ablaze with splendour and had, deep within it, a sweetly dripping pulp of golden pears. - View Quote Details on In July, my father went to take the waters, and…
- Adela’s outstretched slipper shook slightly and shone like a snake’s tongue. - View Quote Details on Adela’s outstretched slipper shook slightly and shone like a snake’s…
- And through those two or three pulses, through the darkness and that red eclipse of blood pounding in my head, the great corvette of Guiana sailed over the entire sky, all of its sails exploding. It glided, heftily dragged along amid thrown out lines and shouts from the tugboats, its sails blown out and rumbling, through a tumult of seagulls and the red splendour of the sea. Then the enormous entangled rigging of ropes, ladders and poles sprouted upon the whole sky and spread wide, and the multifarious, many storeyed spectacle of lofty sails, spars and braces blustered, its unbolted canvas rumbling in the heights, and for a moment tiny nimble Negro boys could be seen in the gaps, being swamped by that linen labyrinth, lost amid the signs and figures of a fantastic tropical sky. - View Quote Details on And through those two or three pulses, through the darkness…
- ‘The Demiurgus [my father said] was enamoured of refined, perfect and sophisticated materials. We give precedence to junk. We are simply enrapt by it, entranced by the cheapness, the paltriness, the tawdriness of the material. Do you understand’ my father asked ‘the profound meaning of that weakness, that passion for gaudy tissue-paper, papier-mâché, lacquered colour, straw and sawdust? — It is’ he said with a woeful smile ‘our love for Matter itself, for its downiness and porousness, its unique, mystical consistency. The Demiurgus, that great master and artist, hides it away, vanishes it under life’s make-believe. We, to the contrary, love its abrasiveness, its unruliness and rag doll ungainliness. Behind each gesture, behind each movement, we like to see its exertion, its inertia, its sweet ursinality.’ - View Quote Details on ‘The Demiurgus [my father said] was enamoured of refined, perfect…
- An infernal storm-cloud of feathers, wings and screeches rose up, in the midst of which Adela danced a dance of destruction, looking like a furious maenad enveloped in the whirling of her thyrsus. - View Quote Details on An infernal storm-cloud of feathers, wings and screeches rose up,…
- ‘Were I, casting aside respect before the Creator, to seek to jest in criticism of creation, then I should demand: “Less content and more form!” Oh, how that loss of content would unburden the world! More modesty in purposes, more restraint in claims, gentlemen demiurges, and the world would be more exquisite!’ cried my father as his hands were laying bare Paulina’s white calf from the fetters of her stocking. - View Quote Details on ‘Were I, casting aside respect before the Creator, to seek…
About Bruno Schulz
Bruno Schulz (1892-07-12 – 1942-11-19 ) was a Polish writer and artist, considered by some to be the greatest prose stylist of the modern Polish language. N.B. The entirety of the fiction remaining to us by Bruno Schulz - one of the world’s great ‘quotable’ writers - was published during a period of only three years, making a chronological ordering of quotations both difficult and of little relevance. It is better, perhaps, in Bruno Schulz’s case to organise quotations by him according to the particular themes his writing addresses.
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