They looked at the paper and saw nothing in those curving lines, but they knew and understood everything, for their geography was in their blood and they felt biologically their picture of the world.
Ivo AndricTo be a man, to have been born without knowing it or wanting it, to be thrown into the ocean of existence, to be obliged to swim, to exist; to have an identity; to resist the pressure and shocks from the outside and the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts - one's own and those of others - which so often exceed one's capacities? And what is more, to endure one's own thoughts about all this: in a word, to be human.
Ivo AndricBetween the fear that something would happen and the hope that still it wouldn't, there is much more space than one thinks. On that narrow, hard, bare and dark space a lot of us spend their lives.
Ivo AndricThere comes a time when a man finds himself in front of a dark uncrossable abyss, which he himself has spent years digging. He cannot go forward, and has no way back. Words have failed, tears won't help, and who would he call out to? He can't even remember his own name. Then the man sees that on this god's green earth there is but one true suffering: the torment of guilty conscience.
Ivo Andric