My rage outweighs my shame, as always happens when one is really ashamed and knows he ought to be.

And even if these scenes from our youth were given back to us we would hardly know what to do. The tender, secret influence that passed from them into us could not rise again. We might be amongst them and move in them; we might remember and love them and be stirred by the sight of them. But it would be like gazing at the photograph of a dead comrade; those are his features, it is his face, and the days we spent together take on a mournful life in the memory; but the man himself it is not.

The music enchanted the air. It was like the south wind, like a warm night, like swelling sails beneath the stars, completely and utterly unreal... It made everything spacious and colourful, the dark stream of life seemed pulsing in it; there were no burdens any more, no limits; there existed only glory and melody and love, so that one simply could not realize that, at the same time as this music was, outside there ruled poverty and torment and despair.

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

Every little bean must be heard as well as seen!

The coffin, it shall protect me, though Death himself lies in it

To forget is the secret of eternal youth. One grows old only through memory. There's much too little forgetting.