“See, that’s what we’re like. You’re brave and you’re not afraid to die, but you’re afraid of being late for work. That’s how enslaved we are, that’s how ingrained it is.”

“The strikingly broad, almost athletically powerful shoulders unfortunately reflected the character of his playing too, for this Mr. McConnor was one of those self-obsessed big wheels who feel personally diminished by a defeat in even the most trivial game.”

“Poverty was crushing all the feeling they had. It was intolerable to be together this way, and yet they tolerated it.”

“This contact with the overpowering is her first encounter with travel’s disconcerting ability to strip the hard shell of habit from the heart, leaving only the bare, fertile kernel.”

“The vast power of money, mighty when you have it and even mightier when you don’t, with its divine gift of freedom and the demonic fury it unleashes on those forced to do without it—”

“Come tutte le nature caparbie non aveva il senso del ridicolo.”

“War does not permit itself to be coordinated with reason and righteousness. It needs stimulated emotions, enthusiasm for its own cause and hatred for the adversary.”

“With secret envy Christine thought: If only I could go back to taking pleasure in such little things, instead of yearning for the impossible.”

“..Growing old, after all, means that one no longer fears the past."..”

“I had no witness against me left but my own memory."..”

“To know by heart is not to know, it is to keep what they have given you and store it in your memory.”

“It’s not your fault. But whose fault is it? Why are we always the ones who suffer? We didn’t do anything, we didn’t do anything to anyone, but every step we take is a trap.”

“Nothing was done to us - we were simply placed in a complete void, and everyone knows that nothing on earth exerts such pressure on the human soul as a void.”

“pain is cowardly, it gives way before the overpowering will to live which seems to cling more strongly to our flesh than all the mortal suffering of the spirit.”

“..pain is cowardly, it gives way before the overpowering will to live which seems to cling more strongly to our flesh than all the mortal suffering of the spirit."..”

“Only he knows that no task on earth is more burdensome and difficult than to maintain one’s intellectual and moral independence and preserve it unsullied through a mass cataclysm.”

“There is always a mysterious conflict in every artist; if life treats him roughly he longs for peace and calm, but if he comes into safe harbour he longs to be back in the turmoil.”

“That is to say, I went in search of every moment I had spent with him. ..."

“intelligence, its tenets those of division, regression, hatred, violence and persecution. In”

“Her words came tumbling out in pursuit of the images hurrying through her mind.”

“He has the sense that up to this moment his life has been a sham; he yearns to live properly, to reflect deeply and ruminate. And it is among his books he hopes to find the solution to the eternal problem of “life and death”.”

“How to safeguard the deepest region of my spirit and its matter which belongs to me alone, my body, my health, my thoughts, my feelings, from the danger of being sacrificed to the deranged prejudices of others, to serve interests which are not my own?”

“How to escape the tyrannical demands that the state and Church seek to impose on me? How to protect that unique part of my soul against enforced submission to rules and measures dictated from outside?”

“dreams are like delicate little white flowers that will be blown away at the first breath of reality?”