“In a light that is fierce and strong one can see the world dissolve. To weak eyes it becomes solid, to weaker eyes it shows fists; before weaker eyes still it feels ashamed, and smites down whomsoever dares to look at it.”

“So perhaps the best resource is to meet everything passively, to make yourself an inert mass, to stare at others with the eyes of an animal, to feel no compunction, with your own hand to throttle down whatever ghostly life remains in you.”

“That's how it will be, except that in reality, both today and later, one will stand there with a palpable body and a real head, a real forehead, that is, for smiting on with one's hand.”

“When the little mouse, which was loved as none other was in the mouse-world, got into a trap one night and with a shrill scream forfeited its life for the sight of the bacon, all the mice in the district, in their holes were overcome by trembling and shaking; with eyes blinking uncontrollably they gazed at each other one by one, while their tails scraped the ground busily and senselessly. Then they came out, hesitantly, pushing one another, all drawn towards the scene of death. There it lay, the dear little mouse, its neck caught in the deadly iron, the little pink legs drawn up, and now stiff the feeble body that would so well have deserved a scrap of bacon.The parents stood beside it and eyed their child's remains.”

“We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.”

“They no longer wanted to entice anyone; all they wanted was to catch a glimpse for as long as possible of the reflected glory in the great eyes of Odysseus”

“Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me.”