That's how the Germans are.... The aristocrats at the top hard as glass, cold as ice, servants of the King, the working masses willing, pliable, sentimental, susceptible to brutality, the middle class educated and cowardly to the point of servility.

But such is life, the silliest proverbs prove to be true, and when a man thinks, now it's all right, it's not all right by a longshot. Man proposes, God disposes, and there's always that last straw to break the camel's back.

The German Reich is a Republic, and whoever doesn't believe it gets one in the neck.

The subject of the novel is reality liberated from soul. The reader in complete independence presented with a structured process:let him evaluate it, not the author. The façade of the novel cannot be other than stone or steel, flashing electrically or dark, but silent.

You shouldn't be a big shot about your fate. I'm an enemy of Destiny, I'm not a Greek, I'm a Berliner.

One encounters very capable fathers abashed by their piano-playing daughters. Three measures of Schumann make them red with embarrassment.

The cities are the principal home and seat of the human group. They are the coral colony for Man, the collective being.