Extremism means borders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death.

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.

Metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with.

Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.

A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.

Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something - love - from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.

But what had happened, had happened, and it was no longer possible to right anything.