Top 19 Quotes by Heinrich Boll

Literature has its own life, even in a dictatorship like the Soviet Union.

It's true and it's easily said that language is material, and something does materialise as one writes.

The war is not planned. I don't believe that any responsible person plans it. But it's thought as possible.

Politicians, ideologists, theologians and philosophers try time and again to provide solutions with nothing remaining: prefab solved problems.

The Nazi period could have happened only in Germany because the German education of obedience to any law and order was the main problem.

We must learn, and especially we Germans, that resistance is not only possible and allowed in dictatorships. There is resistance that man must perform every day.

My most interesting correspondence is with my translators. I marvel at their sensitivity over certain passages that just anyone, even if he knows German well, would not appreciate.

For me, at least, much of the German I see and hear sounds stranger than Swedish, a language of which I unfortunately understand very little.

I was born December 21, 1917, in Cologne, on the Rhine, the son of the sculptor and cabinet-maker, Viktor Boell, and his wife, Maria, nee Hermanns.