FLEISCHMANN: Are you denigrating art and literary history as a matter of principle, or simply because you have extremely high expectations of art?

 

BERNHARD: Well, I’m not denigrating anything; it obviously denigrates itself as it pursues its inevitable course, which, whether we’re talking about culture or politics, always runs downhill; it’s like a pebble or a snowball, the snowball of stupidity.  No matter how small it is when it starts out up there, it arrives down here giant-sized and destroys the entire city of Vienna.  Perhaps it’s bigger than Vienna.

 

Bernhard, interviewed