The body's pain is so paper-thin and insignificant compared to that of the mind.

Traveling tends to magnify all human emotions.

I like him. I have a weakness for losers. Invalids, foreigners, the fat boy of the class, the ones nobody ever wants to dance with. My heart beats for them. Maybe because I've always known that in some way I will forever be one of them.

Some thoughts have glue on them.----Smilla

She was transparent, like a watercolor. As if she were about to dissolve in sound, in tones not yet created.

Confronted with people who have power, and who enjoy using it, I turn into a different person, a baser and meaner one.

The knives in my apartment are only sharp enough to open envelopes with. Cutting a slice of coarse bread is on the borderline of their ability. I don't need anything sharper. Otherwise, on bad days, it might easily occur to me that I could always go stand in the bathroom in front of the mirror and slit my throat. On such occasions it's nice to have the added security of needing to go downstairs and borrow a decent knife from a neighbor.