But what if all the tranquility, all the comfort, all the contentment were now to come to a horrifying end?

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?

Two tasks at the beginning of your life: to narrow your orbit more and more, and ever and again to check whether you are not in hiding somewhere outside your orbit.

So then you’re free?’ ‘Yes, I’m free,’ said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom.

Writer speaks a stench.

Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.

The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.