“As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become. ”

“I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.”

“I am going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.”

“Höderer: You don't love men, Hugo. You love only principles. Hugo: Men? Why should I love them? Do they love me?Höderer: Then why did you come to us? If you don't love men, you can't fight for them.Hugo: I joined the party because its cause is just, and I shall leave it when that cause ceases to be just. As for men, it's not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.Höderer: And I, I love them for what they are. With all their filth and and all their vices. I love their voices and their warm grasping hands, and their skin, the nudest skin of all, and their uneasy glances, and the desperate struggle each has to pursue against anguish and against death. For me, one man more or less in the world is something that counts. It's something precious. You, I know you now, you are a destroyer. You detest men because you detest yourself. Your purity resembles death. The revolution you dream of is not ours. You don't want to change the world, you want to blow it up.”

“Your scare me rather. My reflection in the glass never did that; of course, I knew it so well. Like something I had tamed...I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.”

“We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.”

“There is a universe behind and before him. And the day is approaching when closing the last book on the last shelf on the far left; he will say to himself, "now what?”