“That is to say, I went in search of every moment I had spent with him. ..."

“There is always a mysterious conflict in every artist; if life treats him roughly he longs for peace and calm, but if he comes into safe harbour he longs to be back in the turmoil.”

“Only he knows that no task on earth is more burdensome and difficult than to maintain one’s intellectual and moral independence and preserve it unsullied through a mass cataclysm.”

“..pain is cowardly, it gives way before the overpowering will to live which seems to cling more strongly to our flesh than all the mortal suffering of the spirit."..”

“For a society is always most cruel to those who disclose and reveal its secrets, when through dishonesty society itself has outraged Nature.”

“pain is cowardly, it gives way before the overpowering will to live which seems to cling more strongly to our flesh than all the mortal suffering of the spirit.”

“Nothing was done to us - we were simply placed in a complete void, and everyone knows that nothing on earth exerts such pressure on the human soul as a void.”

“It’s not your fault. But whose fault is it? Why are we always the ones who suffer? We didn’t do anything, we didn’t do anything to anyone, but every step we take is a trap.”

“To know by heart is not to know, it is to keep what they have given you and store it in your memory.”

“I had no witness against me left but my own memory."..”

“..Growing old, after all, means that one no longer fears the past."..”

“With secret envy Christine thought: If only I could go back to taking pleasure in such little things, instead of yearning for the impossible.”

“War does not permit itself to be coordinated with reason and righteousness. It needs stimulated emotions, enthusiasm for its own cause and hatred for the adversary.”

“Come tutte le nature caparbie non aveva il senso del ridicolo.”

“The vast power of money, mighty when you have it and even mightier when you don’t, with its divine gift of freedom and the demonic fury it unleashes on those forced to do without it—”

“This contact with the overpowering is her first encounter with travel’s disconcerting ability to strip the hard shell of habit from the heart, leaving only the bare, fertile kernel.”

“Poverty was crushing all the feeling they had. It was intolerable to be together this way, and yet they tolerated it.”

“The strikingly broad, almost athletically powerful shoulders unfortunately reflected the character of his playing too, for this Mr. McConnor was one of those self-obsessed big wheels who feel personally diminished by a defeat in even the most trivial game.”

“See, that’s what we’re like. You’re brave and you’re not afraid to die, but you’re afraid of being late for work. That’s how enslaved we are, that’s how ingrained it is.”

“One must seek another certitude beyond the world, beyond the homeland; one must refuse to join the chorus of the demoniacal and create one’s own homeland, one’s own world, outside the present time.”

“The world existed for me only in relationship to you.”

“A new world suddenly opened up on the printed page before me, the words moved vigorously towards me as if they had been seeking me for centuries...”

“But you wouldn’t believe what a dead finger does to a living hand.”

“The woman has a dangerous decision to confront, whether she will live her own life, or that of her children, whether she will be a woman first or a mother first.”

“had he been only a hardworking craftsman all his life, fitting colours together as a labourer constructs a building out of stones?”

“the soul cannot remain at peace when the world beyond is in uproar.”

“You don't run amok for long with impunity, you're bound to be struck down in the end...”

“Het was fantastisch te leven in deze stad die gastvrij alles wat vreemd was opnam en zich graag gaf,”

“I wanted to go back over what I had so fleetingly experienced step by step, relishing in retrospect by virtue of that magical self-deception we call memory.”

“Whether we do it or not, we’ll have to see—but still, just to have an idea, to think it through, work it out, and calculate the alternatives down to the ultimate consequences, that’ll be a pleasure I’d never expected to have.”

“It is my opinion that you should lend yourself to others and give yourself only to yourself.”

“the beauty of the creative gesture is wild, unwilling and painful.”

“great creative gifts do not mean fulness and giving out of abundance. On the contrary the expression is that of one who seeks help and strives to emancipate himself.”

“Dare to be naïve.”

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.”

“I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral function of the universe.”

“Humans beings always do the most intelligent thing…after they’ve tried every stupid alternative and none of them have worked”

“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty........ but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”

“Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.”

“If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don't bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.”

“Geniuses are just people who had good mothers.”

“The minute you choose to do what you really want to do,

“I'm not a genius. I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience.”

“In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete.”

“Dare to be naive.”

“Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.”

“I am convinced that creativity is a priori to the integrity of the universe and that life is regenerative and conformity meaningless.”

“Love is omni-inclusive, progressively exquisite, understanding and compassionately attuned to other than self.”

“Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is quite staggering”