Nothing is more difficult to exterminate than religion, no matter how false it may be.

I was born into this world without knowing what life was all about. Only power promised fulfillment in life, and I have pursued it – long enough to recognize that it’s a false promise and that this road leads to nothing. But I tried. Even if we get no answers to our questions, it is the inalienable right of every living being to search for them – by all means, on all paths, and with all strength. What I did was only what I had a right to do.

Your problem, Nagrant,′ he declared, ’is that your education was unconnected with the practical reality of life. You grew up believing that rules are more important than all the facts you could ever uncover, and that the slightest disobedience is deadly.

Nargant often noticed how his own thought processes made endless twists and turns, even to reach totally insignificant decisions, and how much energy he wasted, almost without thinking about it, trying to protect himself on all sides against all eventualities.

It seems to me, dear sister, that you still think the important thing is to become like everybody else. In reality, the important thing is to become different from the others, to discover your uniqueness. You’re a rebel by birth, but that doesn’t mean much. Your own rebellion is still ahead of you.

Unangenehme Hektik strömte von ihm aus. Er wirkte, als käme er aus einer Welt, in der die Rolltreppen schneller fahren, sich automatische Türen rascher öffnen, in der jeder rennt statt zu gehen und die Stunde nur fünfzig Minuten dauert.

But shame is like a wound that is never exposed and therefore never heals.

It only becomes art if it touches other people.