There is one way to understand another culture. Living it. Move into it, ask to be tolerated as a guest, learn the language.

The problem with anger against God is that it's impossible to go higher in the system to complain.

There is one way to understand another culture. Living it. Move into it, ask to be tolerated as a guest, learn the language.

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.

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

Under certain circumstances the fateful decisions in life, sometimes even in matters of life and death, are made with an almost indifferent ease. While the little things-for instance, the way people hang on to what is over-seem so important.

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