“I believe the present matters --- not the past! The past must go. If we seek to keep the past alive, we end, I think, by distorting it. We see it in exaggerated terms --- a false perspective.”

“The past is the father of the present.”

“We are ready to despair too soon, we are ready to say, ‘What’s the good of doing anything?’ Hope is the virtue we should cultivate most in this present day and age.”

“Nobody shall drive us away,” I said. “We're going to be happy here.” We said it like a challenge to fate.”

“One must have common sense, nothing is permanent, nothing endures. I have come to the conclusion that this place is run by a madman. A madman, let me tell you, can be very logical. If you are rich and logical and also mad, you can succeed for a very long time in living out your illusion. But in the end....in the end this will break up. Because, you see, it is not reasonable what happens here! That which is not reasonable must always pay the reckoning in the end.~Dr. Barron”

“I think human beings matter more than stones. (Signor Richetti)”

“Human curiosity. Such a very interesting thing. Think of what we owe to it throughout history. It is said to be usually associated with the cat. Curiosity killed the cat. But I should say really that the Greeks were the inventors of curiosity.”