He walked on without resting. He had a terrible longing for some distraction, but he did not know what to do, what to attempt. A new overwhelming sensation was gaining more and more mastery over him every moment; this was an immeasurable, almost physical, repulsion for everything surrounding him, an obstinate, malignant feeling of hatred. All who met him were loathsome to him - he loathed their faces, their movements, their gestures. If anyone had addressed him, he felt that he might have spat at him or bitten him... .

I am strongly convinced that not only too much consciousness but even any consciousness at all is a sickness.

Schoolboys are a merciless race, individually they are angels, but together, especially in schools, they are often merciless.

I think that if one is faced by inevitable destruction -- if a house is falling upon you, for instance -- one must feel a great longing to sit down, close one's eyes and wait, come what may . . .

It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.

Do you believe in a future everlasting life? No, not in a future everlasting but in an everlasting life here. There are moments, you reach moments, and time comes to a sudden stop, and it will become eternal.

We are all happy if we but knew it.