There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.

Canetti spent his childhood years from 1905 to 1911 in Ruse until the family moved to Britain. Before settling in Ruse they had lived in Livorno in the 17th century. The original family name was Cañete named after a village in Spain.

He wrote in German and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981 "for writings marked by a broad outlook a wealth of ideas and artistic power".