“How come everyone's making like everthing that isn't important is very important, all the while they're so busy pretending what's really important isn't important at all?”

“Alles ist egal", ruft er seiner Klasse zu. "Denn alles fängt nur an, um aufzuhören. In demselben Moment, in dem ihr geboren werdet, fangt ihr an zu sterben. Und so ist es mit allem.”

“And although we'd sworn we'd never become like them, that was exactly what was happening. We weren't even fifteen yet. Thirteen, fourteen, adult, dead.”

“Everything begins only to end. The moment you were born you began to die. That's how it is with everything.”

“To be sure, there were still a lot of people against us, but the very intensity of the fight over the meaning of the heap of meaning could only indicate that the matter was of the greatest significance. And significance was the same as meaning, and the greatest significance was therefore the same as the greatest meaning.And I only doubted a tiny little bit.”

“We cried because we had lost something and gained something else. And because it hurt both losing and gaining. And because we knew what we had lost but weren't as yet able to put into words what it was we had gained.”

“We were supposed to amount to something. Something was the same as someone, and even if nobody ever said so out loud, it was hardly left unspoken, either. It was just in the air, or in the time, or in fence surrounding the school, or in our pillows, or in the soft toys that after having served us so loyally had now been unjustly discarded and left to gather dust in attics or basements. I hadn't known.”