It was a melancholy secret that reality can arouse desires but never satisfy them.

I had the feeling of slipping down a smooth bottomless pit. It had nothing to do with Breuer and the people. It had nothing to do with Pat even. It was the melancholy secret that reality can arouse desires but never satisfy them; that love begins with a human being but does not end in him; and that everything can be there: a human being, love, happiness, life — and that yet in some terrible way it is always too little, and grows ever less the more it seems.

On the steps is a machine-gun ready for action. The square is empty; only the streets that lead into it are jammed with people. It would be madness to go farther - the machine-gun is covering the square.

We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial—I believe we are lost.

No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.

Someone said to me once that a cigarette at the right moment is better than all the ideals in the world.

Sweet dreams though the guns are booming.