This vast life - the real, interior one in which we remain linked to the dead (because the dream inside us ignores trivialities like breath, or absence) - this vast life is not under our control. Everything we have seen and everyone we have known goes into us and constitutes us, whether we like it or not. We are linked together in a pattern we cannot see and whose effects we cannot know.

I wonder, now, about interrogation chambers: why do they think bright light brings the truth out of people? They should try the seduction of shadows, where you cannot watch your words hit their target.

The human brain cannot encompass total absence. Like infinity, it is simply not something that the organ runs to. The space someone leaves must be filled, so we dream forever of those who are no longer here. Our minds make them live again.

We don't catch hold of an idea, rather the idea catches hold of us and enslaves us and whips us into the arena so that we, forced to be gladiators, fight for it.

Per capita the East Germans drank more than twice as much as their West German counterparts.

At the end of our lives it is our loves we remember most, because they are what shaped us. We have grown to be who we are around them, as around a stake.

The cynic sees only cynicism, the depressive can taint creation with one glance