“Can a country's people be better than its planes?”

“Who in the world has not yearned for a loved one, has never said, If only he or she could come back just once, just one more time...? Despite the fact that it can never happen, never ever. Surely this is the saddest thing about our mortal world, and its sadness will go on shrouding human life like a blanket of fog until its final extinction.”

“Can one move an empire as if it were a house?”

“I could not understand how people could not like something as beautiful as the aerodrome. But I had lately become convinced that in general people were pretty boring. They liked to moan for hours on end about how hard it was to make ends meet, about the money they owed, the price of food, and other similar worries, but the minute some more brilliant or attractive subject come up, they were struck deaf.”

“Winter hurled more wind and rain at the city than it ever had before. Clouds dashed about in all directions emptying their thunder, hail and rain. The horizon was choked in fog.”

“I couldn't get to sleep. The book lay nearby. A thin object on the divan. So strange. Between two cardboard covers were noises, doors, howls, horses, people. All side by side, pressed tightly against one another. Boiled down to little black marks. Hair, eyes, voices, nails, legs, knocks on doors, walls, blood, beards, the sound of horseshoes, shouts. All docile, blindly obedient to the little black marks. The letters run in mad haste, now here, now there. The a's, f's, y's, k's all run. They gather together to create a horse or a hailstorm. They run again. Now they create a dagger, a night, a murder. Then streets, slamming doors, silence. Running and running. Never stopping.”

“Die Emigration kann ein Zeichen der Stärke oder der Schwäche einer Nation sein.”