One day you're cut off, at the very start you're cut off and can't go back, the language you learn and the whole business of walking and all the rest is for the sake of the single thought, how to get back again.

The only friends I have are the dead who have bequeathed their writings to me — I have no others.

We Can Only Exist By Taking Our Minds Off The Fact That We Exist

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.

Everyone, he went on, speaks a language he does not understand, but which now and then is understood by others. That is enough to permit one to exist and at least to be misunderstood.

We only really face up to ourselves when we are afraid.

Everyone is a virtuoso on his own instrument, but together they add up to an intolerable cacophony.