And since the possession of qualities presupposes that one takes a certain pleasure in their reality, all this gives us a glimpse of how it may all of a sudden happen to someone who cannot summon up any sense of reality — even in relation to himself — that one day he appears to himself as a man without qualities.

[...] a number of flawed individuals can often add up to a brilliant social unit.

... the novel is called upon like no other art form to incorporate the intellectual content of an age.

Clothes, when abstracted from the flow of present time and their transmogrifying function on the human body, and seen as forms in themselves, are strange tubes and excrescences worthy of being classed with such facial decorations as the ring through the nose or the lip-stretching disk. But how enchanting they become when seen togetherwith the qualities they bestow on their wearer! What happens then is no less than the infusion, into some tangled lines on a piece of paper, of the meaning of a great word.

Life forms a surface that acts as if it could not be otherwise, but under its skin things are pounding and pulsing.

The truth is not a crystal that can be slipped into one's pocket, but an endless current into which one falls headlong.

You see how wrong I go, how ridiculous I'm making myself in your eyes by keeping on guessing wrong like this! Doesn't that help you to come out with it? Come on now!