Zitate und Sprüche aus Das wüste Land

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.

April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

Walk until the darkness is a memory, and you become the sun on the next traveler's horizon.

Humans had always been better at killing than any other living thing.

"And what if there's nothing in there?"
"You die and there's nothing beyond that. Nothing. Nothing remains. Someone might remember you for a little while after but not for long."

There's only one thing that can save a man from madness and that's uncertainty.

The number of places in paradise is limited; only in hell is entry open to all.

Do you know the parable about the frog in the cream? Two frogs landed in a pail of cream. One, thinking rationally, understood straight away that there was no point in resistance and that you can't deceive destiny. But then what if there's an afterlife – why bother jumping around, entertaining false hopes in vain? He crossed his legs and sank to the bottom. The second, the fool, was probably an atheist. And she started to flop around. It would seem that she had no reason to flail about if everything was predestined. But she flopped around and flopped around anyway . . . Meanwhile, the cream turned to butter. And she crawled out. We honour the memory of this second frog's friend, eternally damned for the sake of progress and rational thought.

There are some things that you don't want to do and you pledge to yourself that you won't do, you forbid yourself, and then suddenly they happen all by themselves. You don't even have time to think about them, and they don't make it to the cognitive centres of the brain: they just happen and that's it, and you're left just watching yourself with surprise, and convincing yourself that it wasn't your fault, it just happened all by itself.

The same species can't remain dominant forever. Humanity can't be the only ones to survive extinction. Do you think the ammonites and the dinosaurs resisted extinction like we do? Of course not! They graciously accepted their destinies. They weren't just unintelligent enough to avoid it. Humanity goes around recording and sharing our past to help us predict our future, and because of that we just assume that we can change our destiny. That we can overcome something like the Death Stranding. But it's all lies. This world doesn't need us anymore. It's trying to evict us to make room for the next species. And the harder we try and the harder we struggle against it, the more we sully it. Being holed up in here, I bet you have no idea how beautiful the outside world is, do you? How harsh it is? The world didn't change into what it is now for mankind's sake. It's trying to change for the life that comes next.

I soared above the song birds
And never heard them sing
I lived my life in winter
And then you brought the spring

War is a farmer's son from Kansas trying to kill a factory worker's son from Berlin, with neither of them knowing why.