What does it mean to live in truth? Putting it negatively is easy enough: it means not lying, not hiding, and not dissimulating.

A man who loses his privacy loses everything. And a man who gives it up of his own free will is a monster.

Einmal ist keinmal, says Tomas to himself. What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.

[W]e must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory.

Through the air floated only important words, and Flajsman said to himself that love has but one true measure, and that is death. At the end of true love is death, and only the love that ends in death is love.

Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's beautiful.

The river flowed from century to century, and human affairs play themselves out on its banks. Play themselves out to be forgotten the next day, while the river flows on.