Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry.

The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen

To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn't know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn't even know how to be dead.

Forgive me," he went on. "For a long time I have had the peculiar habit of not arriving but appearing.

For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves nor to others, was possible only away from the public: the moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies.

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

Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.