The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.

The novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become

In the political jargon of those days, the word "intellectual" was an insult. It indicated someone who did not understand life and was cut off from the people. All the Communists who were hanged at the time by other Communists were awarded such abuse. Unlike those who had their feet solidly on the ground, they were said to float in the air. So it was fair, in a way, that as punishment the ground was permanently pulled out from under their feet, that they remained suspended a little above the floor.

The novel is a meditation on existence as seen through the medium of imaginary characters.

I think, therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.

We all reject out of hand the idea that the love of our life may be something light or weightless; we presume our love is what must be, that without it our life would no longer be the same; we feel that Beethoven himself, gloomy and awe-inspiring, is playing the “Es muss sein!” to our own great love.

The combination of a frivolous form and a serious subject immediately unmasks the truth about our dramas.