One can translate an editorial but not a poem. For one can go across the border naked but not without one's skin; for, unlike clothes, one cannot get a new skin.

Sorrento, August. For two weeks now I haven't heard a German word or understood an Italian one. This way one can manage to live with people; everything goes like clockwork and no irksome misunderstanding can arise.

There are women who are not beautiful but only look that way.

Scandal begins when the police put a stop to it.

Psychoanalysis: a rabbit that was swallowed by a boa constrictor just wanted to see what it was like in there.

How do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists, then believe what they read.

The heroes of obtrusiveness, people with whom no soldier would lie down in the trenches, though he has to submit to being interviewed by them, break into recently abandoned royal castles so that they can report, "We got there first!" It would be far less shameful to be paid for committing atrocities than for fabricating them.