Yes, that's the way they think, these hundred thousand Kantoreks! Iron Youth! Youth! We are none of us more than twenty years old. But young? That is long ago. We are old folk.

I am often on guard over the Russians. In the darkness one sees their forms move like stick storks, like great birds. They come close up to the wire fence and lean their faces against it. Their fingers hook round the mesh.

... but that's what mankind is like: they only prize what they no longer possess.

Anything you can settle with money is cheap.

Life did not intend to make us perfect. Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum.

Courage is the fairest adornment of youth.

You may turn into an archangel, a fool, or a criminal—no one will see it. But when a button is missing—everyone sees that.