After my parents were dead, I found in a box and in two chests of drawers nothing but hundreds of bright red Alpine caps, I said, nothing but bright red Alpine stockings. Every one of them knitted by my mother. My parents could have gone into the High Alps with these bright red caps and bright red stockings for thousands of years. I burnt every one of those bright red caps and bright red stockings, I said. I put on one of my mother's hundreds of bright red Alpine caps and in this costume burnt all the others, laughing, laughing, continuously laughing, I said.(Goethe Dies, p.65)

— Thomas Bernhard

All my life I have had the utmost admiration for suicides. I have always considered them superior to me in every way.

— Thomas Bernhard

Almost everybody we get together with about a matter, even if it is of the highest importance, is incompetent.

— Thomas Bernhard

Everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death

— Thomas Bernhard

He wanted to be an artist, an artist of life wasn't enough for him, although precisely this concept provides everything we need to be happy if we think about it.

— Thomas Bernhard

I don't belong to the masses, I've been against the masses all my life, and I'm not in favor of dogs.

— Thomas Bernhard

Instead of committing suicide, people go to work.

— Thomas Bernhard

It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.

— Thomas Bernhard

On the one hand we can't be alone, people like us; on the other we can't stand company. We can't stand male company, which bores us to death, or female company either. I gave up male company for years because it's totally unprofitable, and female company gets on my nerves in no time.

— Thomas Bernhard

Parents have a child, and in doing so they bring into the world a monster that kills everything it comes in contact with.

— Thomas Bernhard