We have been fortunate enough to live at a time when virtue, though it does not triumph, is nonetheless not always tormented by attack dogs. Beaten down, sickly, virtue has now been allowed to enter in all its tatters and sit in the corner, as long as it doesn't raise its voice.

I am of course confident that I will fulfill my tasks as a writer in all circumstances - from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime.

I am deeply convinced that God is present both in the lives of every person and also in the lives of entire nations.

You get no thanks from your belly-it always forgets what you've just done for it and comes begging again the next day.

I am of course confident that I will fulfill my tasks as a writer in all circumstances - from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime. No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death. But may it be that repeated lessons will finally teach us not to stop the writer's pen during his lifetime? At no time has this ennobled our history.

Like a bicycle, like a wheel that, once rolling, is stable only so long as it keeps moving but falls when its momentum stops, so the game between a man and woman, once begun, can exist only so long as it progresses. If the forward movement today is no more than it was yesterday, the game is over.

When things are too clear, they are no longer interesting.