Stefan Zweig Quote
For him books are not like men, who impose themselves and burden him with their chatter, and of whom it is hard to be rid. When you don’t call for them they stay put; you can just pick up this one or that, according to your whim: Books are my kingdom. And here I seek to reign as absolute lord. Books offer him their opinion and he responds with his own. They express their thoughts and arouse in him further thoughts. They do not disturb him when he is silent; they only speak when he questions them. Here is his realm. They await his delectation.
Stefan Zweig
For him books are not like men, who impose themselves and burden him with their chatter, and of whom it is hard to be rid. When you don’t call for them they stay put; you can just pick up this one or that, according to your whim: Books are my kingdom. And here I seek to reign as absolute lord. Books offer him their opinion and he responds with his own. They express their thoughts and arouse in him further thoughts. They do not disturb him when he is silent; they only speak when he questions them. Here is his realm. They await his delectation.
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About Stefan Zweig
Zweig was raised in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. He wrote historical studies of famous literary figures, such as Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoevsky in Drei Meister (1920; Three Masters), and decisive historical events in Decisive Moments in History (1927). He wrote biographies of Joseph Fouché (1929), Mary Stuart (1935) and Marie Antoinette (Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman, 1932), among others. Zweig's best-known fiction includes Letter from an Unknown Woman (1922), Amok (1922), Fear (1925), Confusion of Feelings (1927), Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927), the psychological novel Ungeduld des Herzens (Beware of Pity, 1939), and The Royal Game (1941).
In 1934, as a result of the Nazi Party's rise in Germany and the establishment of the Ständestaat regime in Austria, Zweig emigrated to England and then, in 1940, moved briefly to New York and then to Brazil, where he settled. In his final years, he would declare himself in love with the country, writing about it in the book Brazil, Land of the Future. Nonetheless, as the years passed Zweig became increasingly disillusioned and despairing at the future of Europe, and he and his wife Lotte were found dead of a barbiturate overdose in their house in Petrópolis on 23 February 1942; they had died the previous day. His work has been the basis for several film adaptations. Zweig's memoir, Die Welt von Gestern (The World of Yesterday, 1942), is noted for its description of life during the waning years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire under Franz Joseph I and has been called the most famous book on the Habsburg Empire.