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Was it permissible to snare, exactly like a mouse or an insect, a man who had his certificate of medical insurance, someone who had paid his taxes, who was employed, and whose family records were in order? He could not believe it. Perhaps there was some mistake; it was bound to be a mistake. There was nothing to do but assume that it was a mistake.
thinking only in terms of today… no yesterday, no tomorrow… with a dot for a heart.
There wasn’t a single item of importance. A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes. If life were made up only of important things, it really would be a dangerous house of glass, scarcely to be handled carelessly. But everyday life was exactly like the headlines. And so everybody, knowing the meaninglessness of
existence, sets the center of his compass at his own home.
I brought up the example of sand was because in the final analysis I rather think the world is like sand. The fundamental nature of sand is very difficult to grasp when you think of it in its stationary state. Sand not only flows, but this very flow is the sand. I’m sorry I can’t express it better.”
Yet, though he still clung to the possibility of rescue even now, his hopes would agonize in the poison of his doubts.
Defeat begins with the fear that one has lost.
Work seemed something fundamental for man, something which enabled him to endure the aimless flight of time.
The chances of success were better in spontaneous cases than with plans that had been fussed over.
What in heaven’s name was the real essence of this beauty? Was it the precision of nature with its physical laws, or was it nature’s mercilessness, ceaselessly resisting man’s understanding?
Beautiful scenery need not be sympathetic to man.
You like movies of wild animals and of war because you find that the same old day, following the same old yesterday,
You like movies of wild animals and of war because you find that the same old day, following the same old yesterday, is waiting for you as soon as you come out of the movie house…
pile up rocks in the River of Hades, where the devils cart them off as fast as you throw them in.
—Well, what happens with the River of Hades in the end? —Not a thing. It’s an infernal punishment precisely because nothing happens.
After all, the violence of a single person wouldn’t amount to much.
The houses, floating in the vague light of burning lamps, formed a maze of obstacles
The stock expression! Well, let it be a stock expression. What was the use of individuality when one was on the point of death? He wanted to go on living under any circumstances, even if his life had no more individuality than a pea in a pod. Soon he would be up to his chest, to his chin, to his nose… Stop! This was enough!
course you could—there would be statistical proof that humanity is a hundred per cent abnormal.
Patience itself was not necessarily defeat. Rather, defeat really began when patience was thought to be defeat. He
It was the marrow of his bones rather than the surface of his skin that was trembling. And it was like ripples of water, spreading in slowly widening circles out from the center. A dull and ceaseless ache echoed from bone to bone. It
You can’t really judge a mosaic if you don’t look at it from a distance. If you really get close to it you get lost in detail. You get away from one detail only to get caught in another.
He had been concerned up until now only with curiously exaggerated details: