The art we need is the art of bearing the unbearable.

Women were like rivers, their banks were unreachable, the night often rang with the cries of the drowned.

All of living is nothing but a fervid attempt to move closer together.

The thinking man always finds himself in a gigantic orphanage in which people are continually proving to him that he has no parents.

I really only write about inner landscapes and most people don't see them, because they see practically nothing within, because they think that because it's inside, it's dark, and so they don't see anything. I don't think I've ever yet, in any of my books, described a landscape. There's really nothing of the kind in any of them. I only ever write concepts. And so I'm always referring to "mountains" or "a city" or "streets." But as to how they look: I've never produced a description of a landscape. That's never even interested me.

I had to spend my entire childhood in the Altensam dungeon like an inmate doing time for no comprehensible reason, for a crime he can't remember committing, a judicial error probably.

What is ridiculous about human beings, Doctor,' the prince said, 'is actually their total incapacity to be ridiculous