She stared ahead with eyes where dreams no longer swam, where thoughts no longer had any life. It was that hazy stare of old people behind which was the mysterious nothingness which was drawing nearer, the absolute end, the annihilation of everything and everybody, the awful end in helplessness, grief, grief, and the sleep of everything there is.

To be here or somewhere else, to live or not to live, to look out through a broken window or not to look.

The past looks lovely and important only when the present, the here and now, is miserable and when the future looks unclear or even dismal.

When you abandon everything you can believe in, you're abandoning yourself. As if you've never existed. But that takes a long time. If you're no longer in control of your own life, can you at least be in control of its end?

We lived a decent and beautiful life," the old man said. "Maybe it's our innocence that irritates those who hate us so much and makes them kill us and burn us and hang us. It was a magnificent life because we lived in peace with ourselves. But we were always in the minority.

The hope killed them," said the old man. "It killed the very best of them. And hopelessness straightened out the very best of us.

There was some need, some attraction that drew him closer to the German boy whose life he'd save, just to lose his own. But it was life that connected them, because it was death at the same time. It couldn't be put into words, it was intangible, but it was as complete as everything in life is; it was what connected birds and people or a grain of dust and the stars. It was strong because it was so weak and weak because it was so strong.

Hunger and cold were like two walls with no room for anything else in between but loneliness, in which a man is a stranger even to himself.

To kill and caress. Or simply kill, so you're not always bothered by something or somebody. So it is to be killed or to kill.

There are some things we run after and it turns out that we run in vain. Then there are things we don't pursue, and those are the things that escape us.