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

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

Can you rework your past, the grit that rubs in you, until it is shiny and smooth as a pearl?

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.

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

I had very good eyes once. Though it's another thing to say what I saw. In my experience, it is entirely possible to watch something happen and not to see it at all.

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.